Press releases

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a Report on the platformisation of the EU banking and payments sector. The EBA identifies a rapid growth in the use of digital platforms to ‘bridge’ customers and financial institutions, a trend expected to accelerate in line with the wider trend toward the digitisation of the EU financial sector. Platformisation presents a range of potential opportunities for both EU customers and financial institutions. However, new forms of financial, operational, and reputational interdependencies are emerging and the EBA identifies steps to strengthen supervisory capacity to monitor market developments.

​​​​​​​The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its final Guidelines specifying the criteria to assess the exceptional cases when institutions exceed the large exposure limits and the time and measures to return to compliance. The Guidelines aim to support competent authorities in their assessment of the breaches of the large exposure limits set in the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR), and ensure the Regulation is applied in a prudent and harmonised manner - while keeping the approach simple -, which ultimately, leads to a level playing field across the Single Market.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its revised Guidelines on the stress tests conducted by national DGSs under the Deposit Guarantee Schemes Directive (DGSD). The revised Guidelines extend the scope of the DGS stress testing, by requiring more tests in comparison with the past Guidelines and by covering all the legal missions entrusted to the DGSs. The revisions aim to consolidate depositors’ confidence about the ability of their national DGS(s) to promptly repay their funds in case of banking failure. The revised framework also strives to achieve greater harmonisation and comparability of stress test results, which will enable the EBA to carry out a robust peer review of national DGS stress tests in 2025.

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 three European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, EIOPA and ESMA - ESAs) issued today their second joint risk assessment report for 2021. The report highlights the increasing vulnerabilities across the financial sector, the rise seen in terms of cyber risk and the materialisation of event-driven risks.

​​​​​​​The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its annual update on EU banks’ funding plans, which helps EU supervisors assess the sustainability of banks’ main sources of funding. The results of the funding plans assessment show the impact the pandemic had on EU banks’ funding composition. The plans point to a gradual ‘normalisation’ of banks’ sources of funding over the next three years. This implies in particular a partial replacement of central bank funding with market-based funding.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its peer review on the prudential assessment of qualifying holdings, aiming at assessing competent authorities’ application of the Joint ESAs Guidelines on the prudential assessment of the acquisition of qualifying holdings. Overall, competent authorities have largely or fully applied the ESAs Guidelines, which have thus significantly contributed to the convergence of assessment practices of proposed acquisition or increase of qualifying holdings across the EU.

​​​​​​​The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today 12 indicators and updated the underlying data from the 31 largest institutions in the EU. This end-2020 data serves as input for the internationally agreed standards on which a smaller subset of banks will be identified as global systemically important institutions (G-SIIs), following the final decision from the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB). The EBA, acting as a central data hub in the disclosure process, updates this data on a yearly basis and provides a user-friendly platform to aggregate it across the EU.

​​​​​​​The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its Report on high earners for 2019. The analysis shows that in 2019, 4 963 individuals working for EU banks received a remuneration of more than EUR 1 million, which is mostly the same as in 2018. The average ratio between the variable and fixed remuneration for high earners decreased from 139% in 2018 to 129% in 2019. Institutions’ preparation for the UK withdrawal from the EU has affected the distribution of high earners across the EU with a number of high earners relocating from the UK to the EU.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its Annual Report on resolution colleges for 2020. The Report sets out the EBA’s observations on the functioning of colleges during the year and the progress achieved in key areas of resolution planning. The Report reflects on the effects of moving to a virtual format of discussion on foot of the pandemic, and notes that the enforced change was broadly successful and reflected well on contingency planning measures. However, it also highlights areas for improvement to ensure that information exchange and coordination between members remains robust.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today an updated tool, which specifies the mapping between quantitative disclosure data points and the relevant supervisory reporting data points. This tool aims at facilitating institutions’ compliance with disclosure requirements and improving the consistency and quality of the information disclosed.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today draft implementing technical standards (ITS) amending the ITS on provision of information for the purpose of resolution plans (Implementing Regulation (EU) 2018/1624). The amendments are minimal and aim at re-aligning the standards with the provisions of the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD), following the changes to the minimum requirement for own funds and eligible liabilities (MREL) introduced in the revised BRRD2, as well as to remove some identified obstacles, at the technical level, that hamper compliance with the requirements specified in these ITS. The amended ITS are envisaged to apply for the first time with the reference date of 31 December 2021.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a public consultation on new Guidelines on the role, tasks and responsibilities of anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) compliance officers. The Guidelines also include provisions on the wider AML/CFT governance set-up, including at the level of the group. Once adopted, these Guidelines will apply to all financial sector operators that are within the scope of the AML Directive. This consultation runs until 2 November 2021.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today the results of its 2021 EU-wide stress test, which involved 50 banks from 15 EU and EEA countries, covering 70% of the EU banking sector assets. This exercise allows to assess, in a consistent way, the resilience of EU banks over a three-year horizon under both a baseline and an adverse scenario, which is characterised by severe shocks taking into account the impact of the pandemic. The individual bank results promote market discipline and are an input into the supervisory decision-making process. The adverse scenario has an impact of 485 bps on banks’ CET1 fully loaded capital ratio (497 bps on a transitional basis), leading to a 10.2% CET1 capital ratio at the end of 2023 (10.3% on a transitional basis).

​​​​​​​The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today clarifications to a sixth set of issues that had been raised by participants of its Working Group (WG) on Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) under the Payment Services Directive (PSD2). The clarifications respond to issues raised on authentication with electronic signatures, biometrics and authentication on mobile apps, preventing social engineering fraud, ability of payment initiation service providers to refuse a payer’s request to initiate a payment transaction, and complexity in the authentication process.