Press releases

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today an updated list of institutions, which have a reporting obligation for the purpose of the 2020 EU supervisory benchmarking exercise. The EBA runs this exercise leveraging on established data collection procedures and formats of regular supervisory reporting and assists Competent Authorities in assessing the quality of internal approaches used to calculate risk weighted exposure amounts.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its first quantitative Report on minimum requirements for own funds and eligible liabilities (MREL) under a new methodology. The report shows that authorities have made strong progress in agreeing resolution strategies and setting related MREL requirements but it also notes that banks need to issue MREL eligible debt to close their shortfall.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) acknowledged today the adoption by the European Commission of the Implementing Act amending Regulation (EU) No 680/2014 (Implementing Technical Standards on Supervisory Reporting) with regard to COREP and FINREP changes. The Implementing Act, which is based on the final draft Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) on supervisory reporting submitted by the EBA in July 2019, was adopted by the Commission on 14 February 2020 but its publication in the EU Official Journal is still pending. The amendments to the reporting framework will apply with different reference dates due to different application dates of the underlying regulatory requirements. The first reference date, concerning COREP changes, will be 31 March 2020 (reporting framework v2.9).

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a consultation on draft Guidelines on the appropriate subsets of sectoral exposures to which competent or designated authorities may apply a systemic risk buffer (SyRB) in accordance with the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD). These Guidelines aim at setting a common framework to harmonise the design of the appropriate subsets of sectoral exposures to which a systemic risk buffer may be applied, thus facilitating a common approach throughout the EU. The consultation runs until 12 May 2020.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its third and final Opinion addressed to the European Commission on the implementation of the Deposit Guarantee Schemes Directive (DGSD) in the EU. The Opinion focuses on deposit guarantee schemes (DGSs) funding and uses of DGS funds and proposes a number of changes to the EU legal framework, aimed at strengthening depositor protection, enhancing financial stability and reinforcing financial resilience of DGSs.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today an Opinion following the notification by the Central Bank of the Netherlands (De Nederlandsche Bank – DNB) of its intention to modify capital requirements in order to address an increase in macroprudential risk. Based on the evidence submitted by the DNB, the EBA does not object to the adoption of the proposed measure, which is based on Article 458 (2) of the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR). This new measure aims at enhancing the resilience of the Dutch banking sector to a potential severe downturn in the residential real estate market against the background of sustained price increases in real estate over the past few years.

The EBA issued today a public consultation on revised money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) risk factors Guidelines as part of a broader communication on AML/CFT issues. This update takes into account changes to the EU Anti Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing (AML/CFT) legal framework and new ML/TF risks, including those identified by the EBA’s implementation reviews. These Guidelines are central to the EBA’s work to lead, coordinate and monitor the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, explained in the accompanying factsheet. The consultation runs until 5 May 2020.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its first Report on competent authorities’ approaches to the anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) supervision of banks. This publication is part of the EBA’s new role to lead, coordinate and monitor the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) in all EU Member States, which is further explained in the accompanying factsheet.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) issued today an updated list of validation rules and XBRL taxonomy related to its Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) on supervisory reporting. This update aims to improve data quality issues for the reporting framework v 2.9.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) issued a new benchmarking report on diversity practices in credit institutions and investment firms analysing the development since its 2015 diversity benchmarking exercise. Based on data as of September 2018, still many institutions, 41.61% out of 834, have not adopted a diversity policy. The representation of women in management bodies is still relatively low and many institutions do not have a gender diverse board. The EBA calls on institutions and Member States to consider additional measures for promoting a more balanced representation of both genders and on competent authorities to ensure institutions’ compliance with the requirement to adopt diversity policies.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today the 2020 EU-wide stress test, the fifth exercise since its establishment, and released the macroeconomic scenarios. The adverse scenario follows for the first time a ‘lower for longer’ narrative, a recession coupled with low or negative interest rates for a prolonged period. The EU real GDP would decline by 4.3% cumulatively by 2022, resulting in the most severe scenario to date. The EBA expects to publish the results of the exercise by 31 July 2020.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today two Reports on the consistency of risk weighted assets (RWAs) across all EU institutions authorised to use internal approaches for the calculation of capital requirements. The reports cover credit risk for high and low default portfolios (LDPs and HDPs), as well as market risk. The results confirm that the majority of risk-weights (RWs) variability can be explained by fundamentals. These benchmarking exercises are a fundamental supervisory and convergence tool to address unwarranted inconsistencies and restoring trust in internal models.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) acknowledged today the EU Commission’s decision to consider the supervisory and regulatory framework applicable to credit institutions in Serbia and South Korea as equivalent to that applied in the Union. The Commission’s decision follows the EBA’s assessment of non-EU countries' equivalence with the EU prudential supervision and regulatory requirements. In its Opinion, in November 2018, the EBA concluded that the supervisory and regulatory framework applicable to credit institutions in Serbia and South Korea can be regarded as equivalent to that applied in the Union.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) publishes today an amendment to its 2018 guidelines on fraud reporting under the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2). The changes reflect some consequential amendments to the reporting templates under the guidelines as a result of clarifications provided more recently by the European Commission on the application of strong customer authentication (SCA) to certain type of transactions.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a public consultation on possible future changes to the EU-wide stress test. This discussion paper aims to present the EBA’s vision of the future of the EU-wide stress test and to collect comments and feedback from the different users. “The framework we are proposing today aims at making the EU-wide stress test more informative, flexible, and cost-effective, said the EBA Chairperson, Jose Manuel Campa, in launching the consultation. Campa added, “It is the first time we embark on a comprehensive discussion on the future of EU stress testing and we are keen to receive feedback from a wide range of stakeholders”. The consultation runs until 30 April 2020.