Press releases

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today an Opinion addressed to the EU institutions expressing its views on a number of aspects related to own funds in the context of the European Commission’s proposal to amend the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR) and Capital Requirements Directive (CRD). In the Opinion, the EBA calls, in particular, for a possible strengthening of the Authority’s role in assessing issuances of CET1 instruments. In addition, the Opinion elaborates on restrictions on distributions in the context of capital conservation measures and suggests introducing a general anti-circumvention principle. The views expressed in this Opinion are not meant to be exhaustive and focus on the areas deemed to be the most significant ones.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a consultation setting out its guidance for the use of cloud service providers by financial institutions. The EBA Recommendations intend to clarify the EU-wide supervisory expectations if institutions intend to adopt cloud computing, so as to allow them to leverage the benefits of using cloud services, while ensuring that any related risks are adequately identified and managed. The consultation runs until 18 August 2017.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its final Guidelines on credit institutions’ credit risk management practices and accounting for expected credit losses. These Guidelines aim at ensuring sound credit risk management practices associated with the implementation and on-going application of the accounting for expected credit losses. The Guidelines are part of the EBA’s work on the implementation of IFRS 9 and its interaction with prudential requirements and build on the Guidance published by the Basel Committee on the same matter.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its final Guidelines on the assessment of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) risk in the context of the Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP). These Guidelines are addressed to competent authorities and aim at promoting common procedures and methodologies for the assessment of ICT risk.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a public consultation on its draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) further specifying the eligibility criteria to determine whether institutions should be subject to simplified obligations when drafting their recovery and resolution plans. The consultation runs until 8 August 2017.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a consultation on its draft Guidelines on security measures for operational and security risks under the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2). The Guidelines have been developed in close cooperation with the European Central Bank (ECB), and are in support of the objectives of PSD2, such as strengthening the integrated payments market in the EU, mitigating the increased security risks arising from electronic payments, and promoting equal conditions for competition.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today an amended version of its Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) on benchmarking of internal approaches. These amendments aim at ensuring a better quality of the submitted data and, ultimately will assist the EBA and competent authorities in their 2018 assessment of internal approaches for credit and market risk. The EBA plans to annually update the ITS to ensure future benchmarking exercises are relevant and successful.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today an update to the XBRL taxonomy that Competent Authorities should use for the remittance of data under the EBA Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) on supervisory reporting. The revised taxonomy will be used for reference dates from 31 March 2018 onwards.

Today’s publication of Q&As was affected by a technical website issue that resulted in them being temporarily inaccessible. The issue is now resolved.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its final draft Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) amending the European Commission's Implementing Regulation (EU) No 680/2014 on supervisory reporting so as to keep reporting requirements in line with changes in the regulatory framework and with the evolving needs for Supervisory Authorities’ risk assessments. The updated ITS include (i) new information on sovereign exposures; (ii) changes to operational risk; (iii) changes to additional monitoring metrics for liquidity and (iv) Q&A- based changes and other minor amendments. These changes form part of the EBA reporting framework version 2.7, which will be applicable for submissions of data as of March 2018.

The Joint Committee of the European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, EIOPA and ESMA - ESAs) has published its spring 2017 Report on risks and vulnerabilities in the European Union’s financial system. The Report highlights the risks to the stability of the European financial sector in an environment subject to political and economic uncertainties. In particular, the protracted period of low profitability of banks and the difficulties faced by insurers to generate adequate returns to meet long-term liabilities in a low growth and low-yield environment remains a major challenge. In addition, the steepening of the yield curve may benefit earnings across all sectors but it also raises valuation concerns and, in the short term, may not be sufficient to alleviate the low profitability concerns. The Report also highlights the high valuation risk linked to search for yield strategies and repricing of risk premia. Rising operational risks related to information and communication technologies are increasingly requiring supervisory attention.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a call for research papers in view of its sixth policy research workshop taking place on 28-29 November 2017 in London on the topic "The future role of quantitative models in financial regulation".

The European Banking Authority (EBA) issued today a roadmap outlining its plans to update the common European framework for the supervisory review and evaluation process (SREP) in 2017-2018. The roadmap explains the multi-stage approach the EBA intends to follow in updating the EU SREP framework in 2017-2018 and beyond, and summarises the ongoing policy initiatives affecting Pillar 2/SREP that will need to be reflected in the revised EBA guidelines on Pillar 2 topics.

<p>The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a Report on the Peer Review carried out on its ITS on supervisory reporting aimed at assessing how supervisory authorities have ensured its consistent and comprehensive implementation. The Report summarises the outcomes of this assessment involving the supervisory authorities of all EU Member States, the European Central Bank (ECB)/Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) and the supervisory authorities of three European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway). Overall, the Peer Review concluded that most supervisory authorities have put in place robust processes and IT systems to ensure a timely, complete and correct data reporting.</p>

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today an Opinion addressed to the German Federal Financial Services Supervisory Authority (BaFin) following the Competent Authority's notification of its decision to introduce a partial waiver of Article 129 (1)(c) of the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR), which specifies the conditions for the eligibility of covered bonds in relation to risk weight preferential treatment. Given the significant potential concentration problem in Germany, the EBA is of the opinion that the application of a partial waiver is adequately justified.