Basel Committee on Banking Supervision

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision announced yesterday that it had finalised the rules for the Liquidity Coverage Ratio or LCR i.e. the main mechanic for regulating liquidity in the Basel III package of reforms.

The LCR requires that a bank hold a sufficient stock of “High Quality Liquid Assets” to meet its net cash outflows in a hypothetical stress scenario. The rules set out the parameters for the stress scenario, the calculation of the net cash outflow and the type of assets which can constitute High Quality Liquid Assets.

Lobbying has achieved a notable success as certain “residential mortgage-backed securities rated AA or higher” can now be included in a bank’s stock of high quality liquid assets (subject to a 25% haircut, which is lower than the haircut applied to some corporate debt securities and to the limitation that this component can form no more than 15% of the buffer as a whole).
Continue Reading RMBS can form part of the Basel III liquidity buffer. Some good news for the structured finance industry.

A new consultation paper  published earlier this week by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision will inevitably cause uncertainty and is likely to affect investment decisions long before the new rules take effect.

The paper sets out the Committee’s proposal to revise the treatment of securitisation exposures and is largely inspired by the belief that highly-rated securitisations currently attract too little regulatory capital and low-rated senior securitisations are subject to regulatory capital charges which are too high. The proposals are relatively high level. The Committee has invited the submission of comments by 15 March  2013. Responses to the public consultation, together with the results of a quantitative impact study, will be considered as the Committee moves forward to suggest detailed amendments to the securitisation framework.
Continue Reading Basel Committee proposes changes to the Basel II securitisation framework – what does this mean for new issuance?