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The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a report on the costs and performance of structured deposits in the European Union (EU). The report is a response to a request the EBA had received from the EU Commission as part of the implementation of it Capital Market Union Action Plan and concludes that the market for structured deposits in the EU appears to be limited in size and that data on costs and performance is not widely available. The report, therefore, also sets out the steps the EBA will take to enhance the data quality in the future.

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 previous findings, with the majority of risk-weights (RWs) variability explained by fundamentals. These benchmarking exercises, conducted by the EBA on an annual basis are a fundamental supervisory and convergence tool to address unwarranted inconsistencies and restoring trust in internal models.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today the results of its assessment of the applicability and suitability of EU law to crypto-assets. Typically, crypto-asset activities do not constitute regulated services within the scope of EU banking, payments and electronic money law, and risks exist for consumers that are not addressed at the EU level. Crypto-asset activities may also give rise to other risks, including money laundering. In light of these issues, the EBA recommends that the European Commission carry out further analysis to determine the appropriate EU-level response. The EBA also identifies a number of actions that it will take in 2019 to enhance the monitoring of financial institutions’ crypto-asset activities and consumer-facing disclosure practices.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its Risk Dashboard, which summarises the main risks and vulnerabilities in the EU banking sector using quantitative risk indicators. Together with the Risk Dashboard, the EBA published the results of its Risk Assessment Questionnaire, which includes the opinions of banks and market analysts on the risk outlook collected in autumn 2018. In the third quarter (Q3) of 2018, the Dashboard confirms improvements in both asset quality and capital ratios, while profitability remains subdued.

The European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) published today a joint report on innovation facilitators (regulatory sandboxes and innovation hubs). The report sets out a comparative analysis of the innovation facilitators established to date within the EU. The ESAs also set out best practices for the design and operation of innovation facilitators.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) updated today its Recommendation on the equivalence of confidentiality and professional secrecy regimes by adding three non-EU (third country) supervisory authorities to the current list of third country supervisory authorities whose confidentiality regimes can be regarded as equivalent. The EBA Recommendation is designed as a guide for EU authorities in their assessment of third country equivalence with the aim of facilitating cooperation with third country supervisory authorities and their participation in supervisory colleges overseeing international banks.

The European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) have today issued a consultation paper on targeted amendments to the Delegated Regulation covering the rules for the Key Information Document (KID) for Packaged Retail and Insurance-based Investment Products (PRIIPs).

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a response to a letter it had received from a law firm regarding the case of a reclassification by an institution of some specific grandfathered own funds instruments. The EBA also addressed this issue through its Q&A process. In particular, Q&A 2018_4417 (Own funds - Reclassification of own funds instruments from a grandfathered category to a fully eligible category and purpose of grandfathering provision ), clarifies in more general terms the appropriate prudential treatment for such cases.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today some initial observations on the post-implementation impact of IFRS 9 on EU banks. This exercise, which builds on the two pre-implementation impact assessments published in November 2016 and July 2017, is mainly based on data extracted from institutions’ supervisory reporting. The initial observations from this exercise are consistent with the forecasts of the second EBA impact assessment report. The report also identifies some areas for ongoing scrutiny and further work from an EBA perspective.

The European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) published today two joint draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) to amend the RTS on the clearing obligation and risk mitigation techniques for non-cleared OTC derivatives. These standards provide a specific treatment for simple, transparent and standardised (STS) securitisation to ensure a level playing field with covered bonds. They are required for the proper implementation of the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) and will amend the current regulation on the clearing obligation and risk mitigation techniques on OTC derivatives not cleared by central counterparties (CCPs).

As a follow up to its June 2018 Opinion on financial institutions' preparedness for the UK withdrawal from the EU, the European Banking Authority (EBA) today reminds affected financial institutions to maintain their efforts in effective contingency planning and to increase their efforts in communicating to customers. The EBA urges such institutions to take its Opinion into careful consideration and to swiftly proceed with advising customers on the specific implications stemming from the UK withdrawal from the EU.

In its meeting on 12 December 2018, the Board of Supervisors of the European Banking Authority (EBA) decided to carry out its next EU-wide stress test in 2020, in line with its previous decision to aim for a biennial exercise. The EBA will start immediately to prepare the methodology for the 2020 stress test exercise. This decision has been communicated to the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission. In 2019, the EBA will perform its regular annual transparency exercise.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) publishes today its final Guidelines on disclosure of non- performing and forborne exposures. The disclosure will allow market participants and stakeholders to have a better picture of the quality of the banks’ assets, the main features of their non-performing and forborne exposures, and in the case of more troubled banks, the distribution of the problematic assets and the value of the collateral backing those assets.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its annual report on risks and vulnerabilities in the EU banking sector. The report is accompanied by the results of the EBA's 2018 EU-wide transparency exercise, which provide detailed information, in a comparable and accessible format, for 130 banks across the EU. Overall, the EU banking sector has continued to benefit from the positive macroeconomic developments in most European countries, which contributed to the increase in lending, further strengthening of banks’ capital ratios and improvements in asset quality. Profitability remains low on average and has not yet reached sustainable levels.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) issued today a call for expressions of interest to participate in the its working group on Application Programming Interfaces under PSD2 (WG-API). The group will be composed of EBA staff, national competent authorities and representatives of a variety of external stakeholders, and will be chaired by the EBA.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) today launched a consultation on its draft Guidelines on ICT and security risk management. These Guidelines establish requirements for credit institutions, investment firms and payment service providers (PSPs) on the mitigation and management of their information and communication technology (ICT) risks and aim to ensure a consistent and robust approach across the Single market. The consultation runs until 13 March 2019.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its final Guidelines, which will provide a harmonised interpretation of the criteria for the securitisation to be eligible as simple, transparent and standardised (STS) on a cross-sectoral basis throughout the Union. These Guidelines will play a crucial role in the new EU securitisation framework that becomes applicable on 1 January 2019, by providing a single point of consistent interpretation of the STS criteria for all entities involved in the STS securitisation including originators, sponsors, investors, competent authorities and third party STS verifiers.

The Board of Supervisors of the European Banking Authority (EBA) has launched today an open selection procedure for the appointment of a new Chairperson following the appointment of the EBA’s current Chairperson, Andrea Enria, to be the Chair of the Supervisory Board of the Single Supervisory Mechanism from 1 January 2019.

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 its final Guidelines on the conditions that account servicing payment service providers (ASPSPs) must meet in order to be exempted from the obligation to implement the fallback mechanism under the Regulation (EU) 2018/389 on strong customer authentication and common and secure communication (RTS on SCA&CSC). The Guidelines aim at providing clarity to ASPSPs and national competent authorities (CAs) regarding the elements that should be considered for the purpose of an exemption and at ensuring a consistent application of the conditions for an exemption across the 28 EU Member States.