Press releases

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today an Opinion addressed to the European Commission, Parliament and Council and to all competent authorities across the EU on transitional arrangements and credit risk adjustments to mitigate the effect of the accounting standard IFRS 9 on prudential ratios. The EBA supports the progressive recognition of the initial impact of IFRS 9 from 1 January 2018 until 2021.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) issued today an Opinion to the European Parliament, Council and Commission proposing that the decision-making framework for adopting supervisory reporting requirements be made more efficient and fit-for-purpose by replacing the Commission’s Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) with decisions adopted directly by the EBA.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its final Guidelines on liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) disclosure. These Guidelines provide harmonised disclosure templates and tables for LCR disclosure and aim at improving transparency and comparability of LCR and other liquidity risk management related information.

The Vienna Initiative has agreed to establish a Working Group on Capital Markets Union. This follows the European Union’s push to strengthen Capital Markets which will have a major impact on financing of investment and sustaining growth in the Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe region (CESEE). “Strengthening and diversifying sources of finance is crucial in the region today, as the regional catching up process advances and a new model for growth emerges”, commented Werner Hoyer, the President of the European Investment Bank (EIB), which is hosting this year’s Vienna Initiative 2 Full Forum at its headquarters in Luxembourg.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today two reports on the consistency of RWAs, and for the first time, across all EU institutions authorised to use internal approaches for the calculation of capital requirements. The reports cover residential mortgage, SME and other corporate portfolios (collectively referred to as "high default portfolios" - HDP), as well as market risk. The results confirm previous findings and establish these annual benchmarking exercises as a fundamental supervisory tool to restoring trust in internal models.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its final draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) on the disclosure of encumbered and unencumbered assets for the provision of transparent and harmonised information on this topic, as laid down in the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR). Through the disclosure of asset encumbrance based on a consistent definition and formats, these standards will enable market participants to assess the information provided by institutions in a clear and consistent manner.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a consultation on its draft Recommendation on the coverage of entities in banking group recovery plans, which is aimed at defining common criteria to identify entities (subsidiaries and branches) that need to be covered in group recovery plans, and the extent of such coverage. Such criteria should help institutions avoid a fragmented approach in providing information in recovery plans, and provide a common guidance for home and host supervisors. The consultation runs until 02 June 2017.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its fourth thematic comparative Report on recovery planning. The focus of this comparative analysis is recovery options, which are crucial for assessing institutions’ actual capacity to regain viability following a period of severe financial distress. Overall, recovery plans in the sample provided a good overview of recovery options and clear improvements were seen across the board, although some challenges still remain. This benchmarking exercise aims at supporting supervisors in their assessment to identify the crucial elements that banks should consider when designing and selecting credible recovery options.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) organised on 1 and 2 March 2017 a Joint Colloquium with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on ‘New Frontiers on Stress Testing’. The workshop brought together economists, supervisors and policy makers at European and global level with the objective of stimulating the discussion on different aspects of stress testing ranging from the latest methodologies and frameworks for the implementation of liquidity stress tests to macroeconomic variables, capital planning and governance.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a public consultation on its draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) specifying the nature, severity and duration of an economic downturn according to which institutions shall estimate the downturn loss given default (LGD) and conversion factor (CF). These draft RTS are part of the EBA’s broader work on the review of the IRB approach aimed at reducing the unjustified variability in the outcomes of internal models, while preserving the risk sensitivity of capital requirements. The consultation runs until 29 May 2017.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its eleventh Report of the CRDIV-CRR/Basel III monitoring exercise on the European banking system. This exercise, run in parallel with the one conducted by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) at a global level, presents aggregate data on capital ratios – risk-based and non-risk-based (leverage) – and liquidity ratios – the liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) and net stable funding ratio (NSFR) – for banks across the European Union (EU). It summarises the results using data as of 30 June 2016 but does not reflect any BCBS standards agreed since the beginning of 2016, such as the revisions to the market risk framework, or any other BCBS proposals, which have not yet been finalised, including the revisions to credit and operational risk frameworks.

The Board of Supervisors of the European Banking Authority (EBA) agreed in its meeting held on 14 February on the tentative timeline of the 2018 EU-wide stress test. The exercise is expected to be launched at the beginning of 2018 and the results to be published in mid-year. The EBA, in co-operation with Competent Authorities, is now in the process of preparing the methodology and templates with the objective of discussing with the industry in summer 2017. The new methodology will be revised to take into account the implementation of IFRS 9 both in the starting points as well as in the projections.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its final draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) on strong customer authentication and common and secure communication. These RTS, which were mandated under the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) and developed in close cooperation with the European Central Bank (ECB), pave the way for an open and secure market in retail payments in the European Union.

The European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs – European Banking Authority, European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority and the European Securities and Markets Authority) have published a statement in response to industry requests relating to operational challenges in meeting the deadline of 1 March 2017 for exchanging variation margin.

The three European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, EIOPA and ESMA - ESAs) published today a joint Opinion addressed to the European Commission on the risks of money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF) affecting the European Union’s financial sector. This Opinion will contribute to the European Commission’s risk assessment work as well as that of the ESAs of fostering supervisory convergence and a level playing field in the area of anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT).