Banks will have to ramp up their balance sheet disclosure under new requirements announced Wednesday by global regulators.
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has issued the final version of its revised disclosure standards under the new Basel III capital adequacy regime. The stepped-up disclosure requirements aim to enable the market to more easily compare banks’ disclosures of their risk-weighted assets.
In particular, the most significant revisions aim to standardize certain aspects of quantitative disclosure in order to enhance comparability of bank’s disclosures, both between banks and over time. The revised requirements, which must be adopted by the end of 2016, are designed to improve the transparency of the models that banks use to calculate their regulatory capital requirements.
The Basel Committee says that its revisions to the disclosure requirements address shortcomings in the existing regulatory framework, and comprise part of its broader agenda to reform regulatory standards for banks in response to the global financial crisis.
“The revised disclosure framework represents an important shift in both the format and granularity of required bank disclosures. These changes substantially strengthen the disclosure framework and will help users of the disclosures to better understand and assess the measurement of a bank’s risk-weighted assets,” said Stefan Ingves, chairman of the Basel Committee and governor of Sveriges Riksbank.