Press releases

The European Banking Authority (EBA) publishes today an Opinion on the amendments proposed by the European Commission as regards the EBA final draft RTS specifying the assessment methodology competent authorities are to follow when assessing the compliance of credit institutions and investment firms with the requirements to use the Internal Ratings Based (IRB) approach laid down in the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR). These RTS are an important part of the EBA’ regulatory review of the IRB approach, as they harmonise the supervisory assessment methodology on the IRB approach across all Member States in the European Union (EU).

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today an Opinion on how to strengthen the connection between the EU legal frameworks on anti-money laundering and terrorist financing, and deposit protection. The proposals set out in the Opinion are addressed to the European Commission and aim at informing its ongoing reviews of the Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD) and the Deposit Protection Schemes Directive (DGSD). The Opinion is also addressed to the national authorities, to implement some changes already under the current legal framework and ahead of the potential future revisions of the AMLD and DGSD.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its annual Risk Assessment of the European banking system. The report is accompanied by the publication of the 2020 EU-wide transparency exercise, which provides detailed information, in a comparable and accessible format, for 129 banks across 26 EEA / EU countries and for 6 banks from UK. Despite the COVID-19 shock, banks have maintained solid capital and liquidity ratios and have increased their lending to the real economy. However, economic uncertainty persists, profitability is at record low levels, and there are several early signs for a deterioration in asset quality.

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 a Report on the impact of implementing the final Basel III reforms in the EU. The full Basel III implementation, in 2028, would result in an average increase of 15.4% on the current Tier 1 minimum required capital of EU banks. The results do not reflect the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on participating banks as the reference date of this impact assessment is December 2019.

The United Kingdom (UK) left the European Union (EU) on 31 January 2020. Under the Withdrawal Agreement reached between the EU and UK, EU law applies in the UK during a transition period until 31 December 2020. This means that EU law will stop to apply in the UK as of 1 January 2021, and from that date onwards, UK financial institutions not holding a valid authorisation from the supervisory authorities in the EU will lose the right to provide financial services in the EU.

The Joint Committee of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) – ESMA, EBA and EIOPA – wish to highlight the impact in the change of status of ‘Simple, Transparent and Standardised’ (STS) securitisation transactions after the end of the Transition Period on 31 December 2020.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today final draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) on how institutions are to calculate the own funds requirements for foreign-exchange and commodity risk stemming from banking book positions under the FRTB standardised and internal model approaches.

After closely monitoring the developments of the COVID-19 pandemic and, in particular, the impact of the second COVID-19 wave and the related government restrictions taken in many EU countries, the European Banking Authority (EBA) has decided to reactivate its Guidelines on legislative and non-legislative moratoria. This reactivation will ensure that loans, which had previously not benefitted from payment moratoria, can now also benefit from them. The role of banks to ensure the continued flow of lending to clients remains of utmost importance and with the reactivation of these Guidelines, the EBA recognises the exceptional circumstances of the second COVID-19 wave. The EBA revised Guidelines, which will apply until 31 March 2021, include additional safeguards against the risk of an undue increase in unrecognised losses on banks’ balance sheet.

The European Banking Authority (EBA), the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs), have today published a final report with draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) proposing to amend the Commission Delegated Regulation on the risk mitigation techniques for OTC derivatives not cleared by a CCP (bilateral margin requirements) under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR).

The European Banking Authority (EBA) publishes today a Report on significant risk transfer (SRT) in securitisation transactions, which includes a set of detailed recommendations to the European Commission on the harmonisation of practices and processes applicable to the SRT assessment. The EBA proposals aim to enhance the efficiency, consistency and predictability of the supervisory SRT assessment within the current securitisation framework.

Piers Haben, Director of the Banking, Markets, Innovation and Consumers department at the EBA, spoke about a multi-layered approach to regulation at the event "What to regulate? How to regulate? Who should regulate?" organised by the European Association for Banking and Financial Law. In his speech, Piers Haben highlighted the EBA's approach towards innovative applications of technology in the financial sector in accordance with the principle of technological neutrality.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a first assessment of the use of COVID-19 moratoria and public guarantees across the EU banking sector. COVID-19 related moratoria on loan repayments provided breathing space to borrowers across many countries with many banks reporting that loans under moratoria represented a significant share of their total loans. The use of moratoria was particularly widespread for SMEs and commercial real estate but were also important for mortgage loans in some countries. While public guarantees were used to a lesser extent, they allowed banks to provide new lending to many companies impacted by the crisis. The EBA will be closely monitoring the evolution of moratoria and public guarantee schemes (PGSs) in the following quarters.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a Report on the effects of the unwind mechanism of the liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) over a three-year period, from the end of 2016 to the first quarter of 2020. Overall, the empirical evidence does not support the hypothesis that the unwind mechanism has a detrimental impact on the business and risk profile of credit institutions.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its Report on the benchmarking of national loan enforcement frameworks across EU Member States, in response to the EU Commission’s call for advice. The Report introduces for the first time a set of benchmarks for bank loan recovery and identifies areas where the divergence in the national insolvency regimes is wider.  In addition, the Report provides an overview of the characteristics of insolvency regimes that help explain the differences across the EU.