Of Special Interest
Filters
- Newslink Trends-The Global Strategic Perspective
- Juniper Research says digital wallet users to exceed 4.4 billion by 2025, as mobile drives digital payments’ revolution
- Criminals exploit COVID-19 pandemic with rise in scams targeting victims online
- Equifax says Open Banking proving pivotal to pandemic lending
- Consumer confidence in banks, credit card providers and investments remain stable as demand supercharges digital finance says Toluna research
- Mintos says Europeans are starting to embrace investing
- US banks see IT modernisation as a way to improve customer experience
- Risk mitigation in global trade depends on digitisation-Andrew Raymond, CEO, Bolero International comments
- Juniper Research new study says the volume of B2B payments facilitated by non-banks will exceed 53 billion in 2022, from a COVID-related low of 38 billion in 2020
- CMA issues fifth publication over 3 years of the service quality league table of personal and business current account providers
- Barclays says scammers take advantage of COVID-19, cashing in on nations’ uncertainty
- S&P Global report says financial market infrastructure sector's earnings likely to cool off In second half
- Global banking market capitalisation slumps by over 30% amid pandemic says Buyshares research
- Digital wallet spend in Europe & North America to increase by 40% in 2019, finds study
- Juniper forecasts mobile money transactions will exceed 200 billion by 2024
- Banks can save the world from climate change, says former UN climate chief
- Research by NatWest reveals gender divide over attitudes to saving
- Europe’s big bank problem: too much capital is trapped in the US, says Scope
- Later-Life lending market set to almost double in the next 10 years, finds report
- Barclays/Cebr report challenges nation to think differently about wealth
- Fifth of UK investors looking to debt investment, new research reveals
- Regtech will play a more important role in PSD2, says Mitek
- Banks turn to Fintech partnerships to improve customer experience, finds Fraedom
- New industry code to tackle fraud must deliver, says Which?
- New TTF report highlights loss of trust in financial services
- Arxan highlights financial app vulnerability epidemic
- SAS asks whether banks really need to choose between operations and innovation
- Which? raises alarm as almost 1,700 free ATMs become fee-charging
- Financial wellness affects half of peoples’ mental or physical health, finds report
- Study finds traditional financial institutions embrace Fintech disruption
- Grass is greener for environmentally friendly businesses, finds Barclays
- Prospective homeowners would consider a 40-year mortgage to escape renting, finds Santander
- Millennials’ needs are changing the face of banking industry, says new report
- FS is putting consumer data at risk by failing to protect mobile apps, says Arxan
- A lack of belief in their ability holds 28% women back in work, says Cambridge & Counties
- ‘Which?’ reveals Scotland has lost over a third of its bank branches in eight years
- Next downturn unlikely to be as bad as 2008, according to S&P
- FCA reveals findings from first cryptoassets consumer research
- US consumers favour single mobile app for banking and payments
- Banks suffering major IT shutdowns every day, ‘Which?’ reveals
- The US will be a key offshore centre in 2019, says GlobalData
- Debit industry changes markedly in 10 years of the Debit Issuer Study
- UK's ‘Big Five’ face ‘too big to compete’ as small challengers secure stellar returns
- Banks as vulnerable now as before crash, says new study
- Leverage ratio a constant conundrum for European and US banks, says SNL
11th October 2011
SIFI comprehensive data disclosure proposals
Opinion
The Financial Stability Board is proposing that the world's largest banks whose failure represents systemic risk for the financial systems of their home countries provide regular and comprehensive data in a standard format globally.
The FSB was asked to look at the matter by the G20 group of countries in 2009 and last week issued a discussion paper. In defining the problem the organisation stated: "Data gaps are an inevitable consequence of financial innovation and the ongoing development of markets and institutions. And no data initiative can substitute for effective policy design and judgement. However, in the recent crisis, the lack of timely, accurate information has proved very costly. The current data architecture lags well behind the forces driving increased complexity and globalisation of financial systems, institutions and markets. Importantly, there are major gaps in information on the globally active financial institutions that play a key role in the international financial system. There is little consistent information on the major bilateral linkages between such institutions, as well as on their interactions with other key financial institutions and markets across the world. As a consequence, there is a poor understanding of the global financial network which continues to hamper policy responses."
The paper examines risk under five headings:
- Concentration Risk
- Market Risk
- Funding Risk
- Contagion / Spill over risk
- Sovereign Risk.
There can be few rational arguments against the proposal, though a lot of detail is still to be worked out. The proposal however could still get stonewalled by the irrational - namely that many governments place a lot of prestige behind their national 'flag carrier' banks and may therefore find the truth inconvenient. Connected with this is the jostling for position with each country seeking to minimise any commercial disadvantage to its major banks, or prevent altogether. The Basel III proposals on the definition of Core III capital are still proving controversial many months on with individual countries still lobbying for changes to suit their way of banking and for local instruments to be included as Core Tier 1. Another case in point was that Fair Value writedowns of assets were inconvenient for certain nations' bank champions in 2008/09 and the European rules were amended to allow assets to be moved into categories where writedowns were no longer required. Some European banks finding Mark to Market on certain sovereign debt inconvenient did not do it with the full knowledge (connivance) of central banks and regulators. This raises the question as to whether countries will co-operate on providing the data which would exposure some of the weaknesses of their 'national champion banks'.
Added to this the 28 SIFI banks defined to date will also claim it is unfair on the grounds of cost and that it will be commercially unfair for them to have to do this and reveal commercially confidential information whilst other banks do not.
The FSB is seeking comments by 8th November. The paper can be downloaded at:
http://www.financialstabilityboard.org/publications/r_111006.pdf