Press releases

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.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today the final methodology, draft templates and template guidance for the 2021 EU-wide stress test along with the key milestones of the exercise. The methodology and templates include some targeted changes compared to the postponed 2020 exercise, such as the recognition of FX effects for certain P&L items, and the treatment of moratoria and public guarantees in relation to the current Covid-19 crisis. The stress test exercise will be launched in January 2021 with the publication of the macroeconomic scenarios and the results published by 31 July 2021.

José Manuel Campa, Chairperson of the European Banking Authority (EBA) delivered today his openings remarks at the 2020 EBA Policy Research Workshop on the impacts, risks and opportunities of new technologies in the banking sector. The Chairperson underlined the importance of the application of new technologies in the banking sector in a period of increased experimentation and roll-out of new technologies across the EU financial sector and immense technology-enabled change.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) announced today that its 2020 Risk Assessment Report and transparency exercise with bank by bank data will be released on Friday 11 December at 18:00 CET.

Jose Manuel Campa, Chairperson of the European Banking Authority (EBA) delivered today a keynote speech at the XVII International Professional Conference on Good Corporate Governance, where he highlighted the corporate governance challenges faced by the financial sector.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) reminds financial institutions affected by the end of the transition period to finalise the full execution of their contingency plans in accordance with the conditions agreed with relevant competent authorities before the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020. The EBA also reminds institutions to ensure adequate communication regarding their preparations and possible changes to any affected EU customers.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today revised final draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) to specify how to identify the indicators of global systemic importance and revised Guidelines on their disclosure. The need for this revision was prompted by the revised framework introduced by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) in July 2018 to identify global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) as well as by the new requirements laid down in the fifth Capital Requirements Directive (CRD V), which recognise the importance of cross-border activities within the European Banking Union area.

​​​​​​​The Joint Board of Appeal of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs – European Banking Authority, European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, and European Securities and Markets Authority) published today its decision in relation to an alleged non-application of Union law by six national competent authorities brought by Mr. Howerton against the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA). In its decision, the Board of Appeal dismisses the Appellant’s claim as inadmissible as the facts described do not seem to involve insurances and occupational pension funds or any other subject-matter within the remit of EIOPA nor of the Board of Appeal.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today an Opinion setting out how prudential supervisors should consider money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) risks in the context of the Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP). This Opinion forms part of the EBA’s ongoing work to strengthen the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing in Europe.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its second report on how the industry has implemented the EBA Guidelines on Product Oversight and Governance Arrangements (POG). It identifies good practices of financial institutions and concludes that many of them do not sufficiently put the required focus on ensuring that consumers’ needs are met in line with the Guidelines. Therefore, the EBA encourages financial institutions to ensure that the interests, objectives and characteristics of consumers are taken into account when applying POG arrangements, in order to avoid consumer detriment.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a Discussion Paper on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) risks management and supervision aiming to collect feedback for the preparation of its final report on the topic. The Discussion Paper provides a comprehensive proposal on how ESG factors and ESG risks could be included in the regulatory and supervisory framework for credit institutions and investment firms. The consultation runs until 3 February 2021.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a public consultation on revised Guidelines on sound remuneration policies.  This review takes into account the amendments introduced by the fifth Capital Requirements Directive (CRD V) in relation to institutions’ sound remuneration policies and in particular the requirement that those remuneration policies should be gender neutral. The consultation runs until 29 January 2021.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its first monitoring Report on minimum requirement for own funds and eligible liabilities (MREL) and total loss absorbing capacity (TLAC) instruments. The purpose of this Report is to inform stakeholders about the implementation review performed by the EBA on TLAC / MREL instruments so far and to present its views and current recommendations on specific features commonly seen in these instruments. This Report follows the same approach of the reports regularly published on CET1 and AT1 monitoring of issuances.