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The Breach of Union Law Panel of the European Banking Authority (EBA) decided to close the breach of Union Law investigation (BUL) on Dutch supervisory regime governing proprietary traders it had opened against the Dutch Central Bank (DNB). The BUL panel’s conclusion followed the decision taken by the DNB on 13 November 2017 to redress the breach of Union law by terminating the current national prudential framework for traders for own account. The DNB will notify the EBA on capital conservation plans adopted by the firms concerned and the EBA will monitor the application of these transitional measures.

The Joint Committee of the three European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, EIOPA and ESMA - ESAs) published today its draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) specifying how credit and financial institutions should manage money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) risks at group level where they have branches or majority-owned subsidiaries based in third countries whose laws do not permit the application of group-wide policies and procedures on anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT).‎ These RTS are part of the ESAs' wider work on fostering a common approach to AML/CFT and will contribute to creating a level playing field across the European Union's financial sector.

The Joint Committee of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) – EBA, EIOPA and ESMA – published today the 2017 list of identified financial conglomerates.

On 10 February 2016, the European Commission adopted Regulation (EU) 2016/322 (Implementing technical standard – ITS – on reporting on Liquidity Coverage Ratio – LCR), which has become applicable as of September 2016 and adapted to the Commission LCR Delegated Regulation. As a result, the EBA decided to formally repeal its Guidelines setting out the criteria for identifying retail deposits subject to different outflows for the purpose of liquidity reporting, issued in December 2013, as they have been superseded by the LCR Delegated Regulation and are no longer applicable for liquidity reporting purposes.

The European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) have been made aware of challenges for certain counterparties to exchange variation margin for physically-settled FX forwards by 3 January 2018. Based on the material presented to the ESAs, the implementation appears to mainly pose a challenge regarding transactions with certain end-users.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its tenth report on risks and vulnerabilities in the EU banking sector. The report is accompanied by the 2017 EU-wide transparency exercise, which provides key data in a comparable and accessible format for 132 banks across the EU. The data shows further resilience in the EU banking sector amid a benign macroeconomic and financial environment, with an additional strengthening of the capital position, an improvement of asset quality and a slight increase of profitability. However, further progress on NPLs is needed whilst the long-term sustainability of prevailing business models remains a challenge. The importance of robust data management and IT and operational resilience is also a priority.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its third annual Report on the convergence of supervisory practices across the EU. The Report reviews consistency in the application of the Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP) in order to promote comparable supervisory approaches and consistency in supervisory outcomes across the single market. This is necessary for a level playing field, effective supervision of cross border groups, and to identify supervisory best practices.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) welcomes the Council’s decision on its relocation to Paris, in light of the UK’s intention to withdraw from the EU. This is an important decision for the Authority that guarantees a seamless continuation of its activities by reassuring its current and future staff over the new location and putting an end to a period of uncertainty. The EBA is confident that France will support the Authority to ensure a smooth transition, which is crucial to continue delivering on its mission objectives of maintaining financial stability in the EU and safeguarding the integrity, efficiency and orderly functioning of the banking sector.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its final Guidelines on the estimation of risk parameters for non-defaulted exposures - namely of the probability of default (PD) and the loss given default (LGD), and on the treatment of defaulted exposures under the advanced IRB Approach, including estimation of parameters such as ELBE and LGD in-default. These Guidelines, which are part of the EBA’s regulatory review of the IRB approach, aim to restore market participants’ trust in internal models by reducing the unjustified variability in their outcomes, ensuring comparability of risk estimates while at the same time preserving risk sensitivity of capital requirements.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) publishes today its final methodology for the 2018 EU-wide stress test, following a discussion with industry in summer 2017. The methodology covers all relevant risk areas and, for the first time, incorporates IFRS 9 accounting standards. The stress test exercise will be formally launched in January 2018 and the results to be published by 2 November 2018.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its sixth updated list of capital instruments that Competent Authorities (CAs) across the European Union (EU) have classified as Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1). Since the publication of the previous update in May 2017, some new CET1 instruments have been assessed and evaluated as compliant with the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR). The list will be maintained and updated on a regular basis.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) acknowledged 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 amendments to COREP and Additional Monitoring Metrics for liquidity as well as other amendments. The Implementing Act, which is based on the final draft ITS on supervisory reporting submitted by the EBA in April 2017, was adopted by the Commission on 9 November 2017. Its publication in the EU Official Journal is still pending. The amended requirements will apply as of 1 March 2018 (reporting framework v2.7).

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a corrective update (2.7.0.1) to the XBRL taxonomy that Competent Authorities shall use for the remittance of data under the EBA Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) on supervisory reporting. The revised taxonomy will be used for the first report of Financial Reporting (FinRep) requirements compiled under IFRS 9.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a Report on the peer review carried out to evaluate the implementation of its Guidelines on the criteria for the assessment and identification of other systemically important institutions (O-SIIs) across the EU. Overall, the peer review concluded that the majority of the authorities are compliant with the EBA Guidelines, although some of its requirements have not been fully applied in all jurisdictions.

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 large corporate, institutions, and sovereign portfolios (collectively referred to as "low default portfolios" - LDP), 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 its final Guidelines on the treatment of connected clients as defined in the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR), aiming at supporting institutions in identifying all possible connections among their clients, in particular when control relationships or economic dependency should lead to the grouping of clients because they constitute a single risk. The guidelines apply to all areas of the CRR where the concept of ‘group of connected client’ is used, including the EBA technical standards and the EBA guidelines that refer to that concept.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a consultation on draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) specifying the different methods of prudential consolidation, which can be applied when certain conditions and criteria are met. The aim of these draft RTS is to ensure that the appropriate method of prudential consolidation is applied for the calculation of the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR) requirements on a consolidated basis. The con-sultation runs until 09 February 2018.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today an Opinion addressed to the European Parliament, Council and European Commission, on matters relating to the regulatory perimeter under the Capital Requirements Directive/Regulation (CRDIV/CRR). These include the use of Articles 2(5) and 9(2) CRDIV and the interpretation of the terms 'financial institution' and 'ancillary services undertaking' as defined in the CRR. The Opinion is based on the results of a detailed assessment across the EU of the prudential treatment of 'other financial intermediaries' (OFIs), i.e. those entities carrying out credit intermediation activities that are not credit institutions nor other specified types of financial entity. The results of this assessment are included in a Report also published today.‎ The EBA's findings are relevant to the consideration of the legislative proposals to amend the CRDIV/CRR.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its final Recommendation on the coverage of entities in banking group recovery plans. This Recommendation, addressed to both Competent Authorities and institutions, aims at defining common criteria to identify entities that need to be covered in group recovery plans, as well as the extent of such coverage. These criteria will help institutions avoid a fragmented approach in providing information in recovery plans and gain a better understanding of the relevant supervisory expectations.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) publishes today its final Guidelines on the supervision of significant branches. Prompted by the increasing demand to establish branches across the European Union, these Guidelines are designed to facilitate cooperation and coordination between the Competent Authorities involved in the prudential supervision of significant branches of EU institutions established in another Member State. In particular, these Guidelines will facilitate cooperation and coordination of supervision of the largest and systemically important branches, the so-called ‘significant-plus’ branches.