Press releases

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its final draft Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) on information on supervisory approaches and aggregate statistical data concerning the new prudential requirements that competent authorities will have to disclose publicly for all types of investment firms authorised under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID). These final draft technical standards, which are part of the Phase 2 mandates of the EBA Roadmap on investment firms, will ensure that the disclosed information is comprehensive and comparable across all Member States.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today an Opinion following the notification by the Estonian macroprudential authority, Eesti Pank, of its intention to extend a measure originally introduced in 2019 to ensure that banks hold sufficient own funds to cover systemic risks related to housing loans and to act as a backstop limiting any further decrease in risk weights. For credit institutions that operate in Estonia and use the internal ratings-based (IRB) approach, the measure introduces a minimum level for the average risk weight for residential mortgage loans to obligors residing in Estonia. Based on the evidence submitted, the EBA does not object to the extension of the proposed measure, which will be applied for two years.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a public consultation on amendments to its Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) on credit risk adjustments in the context of the calculation of the Risk Weight (RW) of defaulted exposures under the Standardised Approach (SA). The proposed amendments follow up on the European Commission’s Action Plan to tackle non-performing loans in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which indicated the need for a revision of the treatment of defaulted exposures under the SA. This update is necessary to ensure the prudential framework does not create disincentives to the sale of non-performing assets. The consultation runs until 23 September 2021.

The European Commission, the European Central Bank in its banking supervisory capacity (ECB Banking Supervision), the European Banking Authority (EBA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) today issued a joint statement in which they strongly encourage market participants to use the time remaining until the cessation or loss of representativeness of USD LIBOR, GBP LIBOR, JPY LIBOR, CHF LIBOR and EUR LIBOR to substantially reduce their exposures to these rates. The statement also encourages market participants to cease using the 35 LIBOR settings, including USD LIBOR, as a reference rate in new contracts as soon as practicable and by 31 December 2021 at the latest. Participants are also called on to limit the use of any LIBOR setting published under a changed methodology and to include robust fallback clauses nominating alternative rates in all contracts referencing LIBOR. The European Commission, ESMA, ECB Banking Supervision and the EBA will monitor the situation and LIBOR exposures closely.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its updated Report on the monitoring of Additional Tier 1 (AT1) instruments including an update on the monitoring of the implementation of the EBA’s Opinion on legacy instruments and its considerations on ESG capital bonds. The objective of this update is to further strengthen the robustness and quality of EU institutions’ own funds and eligible liabilities instruments.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a Report on the treatment of incoming third country branches (TCB) under the national law of Member States. The Report, which is addressed to the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission, illustrates the results of a stock-taking exercise conducted with competent authorities about their national regulatory law/regulations and supervisory practices and a mapping of the TCBs established in the Member States. Considering the increased volume of activities carried out by TCBs in a context of regulatory fragmentation across the EU, the Report lays down 14 high-level policy recommendations for further harmonisation of EU law.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a public consultation to amend its Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) on Supervisory Reporting with regards to COREP and asset encumbrance reporting as well as the reporting for the purposes of identifying global systemically important institutions (G-SIIs). Among others, this consultation paper aims to enhance proportionality in the area of asset encumbrance reporting, as recommended by the EBA’s Report on the Study on the Cost of compliance with supervisory reporting requirements (CoC report). The consultation runs until 23 September 2021.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its Report on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) risks management and supervision. The Report, which is a key component of the EBA’s broader ESG work, provides a comprehensive proposal on how ESG factors and ESG risks should be included in the regulatory and supervisory framework for credit institutions and investment firms.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a Report on the data provided by PSPs on their readiness to apply SCA for the subset of payment transactions that are e-commerce card-based payment transactions. The Report highlights the status of issuing and acquiring PSPs in enrolling online merchants, payment cards and payment service users (PSUs) into SCA-compliant solutions, and in requesting SCA for online payment transactions after 31 December 2020, when the SCA migration period ended.

The Joint Committee of the three European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, EIOPA and ESMA - ESAs) published today two amended Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) on the mapping of credit assessments of External Credit Assessment Institutions (ECAIs).

The European Banking Authority (EBA) issued today a revised list of validation rules in its Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) on supervisory reporting, highlighting those, which have been deactivated either for incorrectness or for triggering IT problems. Competent Authorities throughout the EU are informed that data submitted in accordance with these ITS should not be formally validated against the set of deactivated rules.

​​​​​​​The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its final revised Guidelines on major incident reporting under the Payment Service Directive (PSD2). The revised Guidelines optimise and simplify the reporting process and templates, focus on incidents with significant impact on payment service providers (PSPs), and improve the meaningfulness of the information to be reported. The revised Guidelines are also estimated to reduce the reporting burden for PSPs.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a second consultation on its draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) on the calculation of the threshold for investment firms. With this consultation, the EBA is seeking to address the level playing field concerns raised by the industry in relation to geographical constraints of some undertakings a well as to ensure a more proportionate and consistent methodology for the calculation of the thresholds. These RTS are part of the EBA’s roadmap for delivering on mandates related to the implementation of a new prudential regime for investment firms. The consultation runs until 17 July 2021.

As part of its drive for more proportionate regulatory and supervisory framework, the European Banking Authority (EBA) has finalised its comprehensive study of the cost of compliance of European Economic Area (EEA) banks with the supervisory reporting requirements. In the summary report published today, the EBA has identified numerous recommendations collectively leading to a potential reduction of the banks’ reporting costs by up to 15-24%. Most of the recommendations will be implemented by the EBA as part of its ongoing policy work on developing and enhancing the common EU supervisory reporting framework.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today an updated list of indicators for risk assessment and risk analysis tools, together with the accompanying methodological guide. This guidance, which describes how risk indicators are computed in EBA publications, allows competent authorities and users of EBA data to interpret key bank figures in a consistent fashion when conducting their risk assessments and analyses.