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Q&As refer to the provisions in force on the day of their publication. The EBA does not systematically review published Q&As following the amendment of legislative acts. Users of the Q&A tool should therefore check the date of publication of the Q&A and whether the provisions referred to in the answer remain the same.

Please note that the Q&As related to the supervisory benchmarking exercises have been moved to the dedicated handbook page. You can submit Q&As on this topic here.

List of Q&A's

Surcharging

Is a ‘foreign exchange margin’ or 'currency conversion fee'  different from a ‘surcharge’ and do different foreign exchange margins above the ECB mid-market rate not constitute a surcharge?

  • Legal act: Directive 2015/2366/EU (PSD2)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Not applicable

Immediate Refund by the Payment Service Provider of unauthorised SEPA Direct Debit transactions after 8 weeks.

Our question is related to ‘unauthorised’ transactions, and as from when it is qualified as unauthorised? Is this as soon as any payment service user claims that the transaction is unauthorised?   -Or is this as soon as the payment service provider analysed if the transaction is really unauthorised?

  • Legal act: Directive 2015/2366/EU (PSD2)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Not applicable

Potential inconsistency on the application of Strong Customer Authentication exemptions to AISPs

Shall Account Servicing Payment Service Providers (ASPSPs) always grant Account Information Service Provider (AISPs) to be exempted from Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) according to rules defined in Article 10 of the RTS on strong customer authentication and secure communication (Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/389), or is the final decision to apply such exemption always up to the ASPSP?

  • Legal act: Directive 2015/2366/EU (PSD2)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Regulation (EU) 2018/389 - RTS on strong customer authentication and secure communication

90 Day Access via Direct Access

Should any solution which involves direct access, whether as a strategic solution to PSD2, or in relation to the obligation to provide a fallback interface, ensure that Account Information Service Providers (AISPs) can access the interface in the same manner as the dedicated interface, specifically on an ongoing basis and for a maximum of 90 days once the customer has provided consent and authenticated using strong customer authentication (SCA)?

  • Legal act: Directive 2015/2366/EU (PSD2)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Regulation (EU) 2018/389 - RTS on strong customer authentication and secure communication

Available financial means

Are all the financial means referred in Article 10 of DGSD available to finance measures to preserve the access of depositors to covered deposits according to Article 11.6 of DGSD?

  • Legal act: Directive 2014/49/EU (DGSD)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Not applicable

Definition of available cash for the purpose of determining intraday qualifying liquid resources in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2017/390 Art. 34(b)

For the purpose of determining intraday qualifying liquid resources according to Regulation (EU) 2017/390 Art. 34, to what extent does “available cash” mentioned in Art. 34(b) include balances on nostro accounts held “at one of the creditworthy financial institutions identified in Article 38(1)”?

  • Legal act: Regulation (EU) No 909/2014 (CSDR) - only RTS 2017/390
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Regulation (EU) 2017/390 - RTS on prudential requirements of CSDs (CSDR-related)

Clarification of the requirement to establish concentration limits on liquidity providers and establish at least two arrangements for each major currency.

In conjunction with REGULATION (EU) No 909/2014 Article 59(4)(e), does Regulation (EU) 2017/390 Article 38(5) stipulate a requirement to have at least two arrangements in place in each major currency to convert collateral or assets into cash using prearranged and highly reliable funding only? Does the requirement to establish concentration limits and to have at least two arrangements in place include alternative liquidity arrangements such as committed unsecured lines of credit or committed FX swap facilities?

  • Legal act: Regulation (EU) No 909/2014 (CSDR) - only RTS 2017/390
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Regulation (EU) 2017/390 - RTS on prudential requirements of CSDs (CSDR-related)

Highly reliable prearranged funding arrangements

Problem Article 59 (4) EBA-RTS and Article 38 (6) (b) EBA RTS do not specify if these arrangements require committed agreements in place, or if uncommitted facilities such as Global Master Repurchase Agreements (GMRAs) or access to CCP repo trading are sufficient. According to our knowledge there is also no definition of “prearranged arrangements” in the relevant European Banking legislation (particularly not in the CRD IV/CRR). Furthermore there is ample evidence that repo arrangements against high quality securities have proven highly reliable and liquid throughout the financial crisis. In addition, repo transactions through a centralised order book and CCP cleared (such as for example the Eurex Repo GC Pooling services), have also proven to be a preferred market option in particular in times of market stress.

  • Legal act: Regulation (EU) No 909/2014 (CSDR) - only RTS 2017/390
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Regulation (EU) 2017/390 - RTS on prudential requirements of CSDs (CSDR-related)

EBA Benchmarking Exercise - C103 - RWA + RWA - RWA ++ RWA --

In order to achieve (RWA + RWA - RWA ++ RWA --) to fill in template C103 of EBA Benchmarking Exercise, when we do not have exposure in the previous year, i.e., in the formula when n = 0, which p- value should we consider?

  • Legal act: Directive 2013/36/EU (CRD)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Draft ITS on Supervisory Reporting of Institutions (for benchmarking the internal approaches)

Granularity required for reference data required

Should we list every reference data attached to an instrument,or a subset of reference data?

  • Legal act: Directive 2013/36/EU (CRD)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Regulation (EU) 2016/2070 - ITS on Supervisory Reporting (for benchmarking the internal approaches) (as amended)

Definition of Rating and Date of most recent rating of counterparty

How is the rating and date of most recent rating of counterparty to be reported, in case there is an actual exposure but no valid rating available anymore?

  • Legal act: Directive 2013/36/EU (CRD)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Draft ITS on Supervisory Reporting of Institutions (for benchmarking the internal approaches)

Default Rate calculation

As part of the implementation of IFRS9 on the 1st of Jan 2018 banks may have also implemented a new Definition of Default. A new definition could result in a large uplift in default stock. However, by virtue of the way that new defaults are captured in COREP, the impact of this is that ‘New Defaults’ for the year could be artifically inflated by this stock adjustment due to the newly implemented definition. This inflated default rate is not representative of real ‘New Defaults’ in the year. Should default rate be reported in the data submission as reported in COREP or should the default rate by adjusted to mitigate the effects of the implementation of the new definition of default (i.e. by removing the stock adjustment facilities from the ‘New Defaults’ population and from the start of year performing population and calculate what we believe is the real 1 year default rate)? If no adjustment is made, this will distort default rate values.

  • Legal act: Directive 2013/36/EU (CRD)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Draft ITS on Supervisory Reporting of Institutions (for benchmarking the internal approaches)

Supervisory Benchmarking Exercise 2019: RWA- and RWA --

For the purpose of Template C103 institutions shall report RWA- and RWA--. According to the corresponding instructions (Annex IV), RWA- and RWA-- result from the application of PD- and PD-- (instead of the institution’s PD values). For this purpose, shall regulatory PD-floors as defined in art. 160 (1) and 163 (1) CRR be applied?

  • Legal act: Directive 2013/36/EU (CRD)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Draft ITS on Supervisory Reporting of Institutions (for benchmarking the internal approaches)

Market risk benchmarking - specification of Long position on “Cap and Floor” 10-year UBS AG (Ticker: UBSG VX) Notes.

The specification for section 2. IR. 23, institutions shall provide IMV on a long position note issued by UBS. Should the institutions include credit risk on UBS note?

  • Legal act: Directive 2013/36/EU (CRD)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Draft ITS on Supervisory Reporting of Institutions (for benchmarking the internal approaches)

[Supervisory Benchmarking Exercise] Annex II, C 102, Column 110 - Filling in for LDPs

How should we report collateralisation status for secured facilities and collateralised SFT and Derivatives activity?

  • Legal act: Directive 2013/36/EU (CRD)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Draft ITS on Supervisory Reporting of Institutions (for benchmarking the internal approaches)

Funded and unfunded credit protection

In cases when a contract has funded and unfunded credit protection, should any of them take precedence over the other? For example, a contract with an exposure of 100, a funded credit protection of 50 and unfunded of 70. If there is no preference, the sum of credit protections is more than exposure, but if funded credit protection takes precedence over unfunded, the result is the next: funded credit protection of 50, 35 unfunded (70% of 50) and 15 without credit protection. In the last case, the sum is the exposure. How should we treat these guarantees?

  • Legal act: Directive 2013/36/EU (CRD)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Draft ITS on Supervisory Reporting of Institutions (for benchmarking the internal approaches)

Provisions relating to securitised assets which have been derecognised for accounting.

Template C.14 (Sec Details col 210) requires reporting of information on securitised exposures including associated provisions. The memo standardised calculation C.14.1 (Sec Details Approach col 448) also requires provisions on underlying assets as an input to the SEC-SA calculation. What provisions should be used when the securitised exposures have been derecognised by the reporting entity from an accounting perspective and provisions are therefore not made by the originator bank reporting entity?

  • Legal act: Regulation (EU) No 575/2013 (CRR)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Regulation (EU) No 680/2014 - ITS on supervisory reporting of institutions (repealed)

Incorrect validation rules

Following validation rules are incorrect: v4764_m v4765_m v4766_m v4767_m v4768_m

  • Legal act: Regulation (EU) No 575/2013 (CRR)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Regulation (EU) No 680/2014 - ITS on supervisory reporting of institutions (repealed)

Gross carrying amount for purchased credit-impaired assets in FINREP and COREP

How should we define gross carrying amount of purchased credit-impaired assets (POCI) for reporting into FINREP templates (i. e. F 18.00 and F 19.00)? Related to gross carrying amount in previous question, how should we in define original exposures for reporting into COREP and LE templates? How should we calculate coverage ratio by allowances or provisioning for credit losses, if the value of allowances for expected credit losses related to the POCI is positive? For example: In Q1 2018 bank A simultaneously with other forbearance measures in respected existing exposures to the debtor who is already in default, grants him a new loan in CU 100.000 (=so-called transaction price). There is evidence that the loan is already credit-impaired at initial recognition, based on that fact bank identified this exposure as an originated credit-impaired financial asset in stage 3 (=POCI).The fair value of the loan at the time of drawdown (i.e. at initial recognition) is only CU 55.000, mainly due to the significant credit risk value adjustment. Therefore, bank at initial recognition in accordance with paragraph B5.1.2A (b) of IFRS 9 recognises one-day profit or loss (P&L) in CU 45.000. Bank recognises also allowance for expected credit losses (ECL) in CU 1.000. In Q4 2018 bank find out that estimated allowance for ECL in CU 1.000 and negative fair value adjustment due to credit risk in CU 45.000, which was, taking in to account one-day P&L and calculation of credit-adjusted effective interest rate under paragraph 5.4.1 (a) of IFRS 9, too pessimistic. Therefore, bank reverses allowances from the previous period in CU 1.000. In addition, bank recognises positive amount of allowances for ECL in CU 2.000. The same situation could happened if Bank A modified financial assets, which in accordance with paragraph B5.5.25 of IFRS 9 would result in the derecognition of the existing financial asset and the subsequent recognition of the new modified financial asset. If there is evidence that the new modified financial asset is credit-impaired at initial recognition, it should be in accordance with paragraph B5.5.26 of IFRS 9 recognised as an originated credit-impaired financial asset (=POCI). Based on presented example, which option to calculate the gross carrying amount under paragraph 34 (b) of Part 2 Annex V of Regulation (EU) No 680/2014 for reporting purposes in the FINREP templates is correct: Option A: Fair value of financial asset defined at initial recognition in accordance with paragraphs 5.1.1, 5.1.1A and B5.1.2A of IFRS 9, as the starting point for using amortized cost method at subsequent measurement, because FINREP templates in general follow IFRS. According end of the Q1 and Q4 gross carrying amount is CU 55.000 (= transaction price in CU 100.000 minus recognised one day P&L in CU 45.000). Option B: Fair value of financial asset after adding back any negative fair value adjustment due to credit risk at initial recognition of financial asset, as starting point for credit losses calculation both for accounting and for capital adequacy purposes. According end of the Q1 and Q4 gross carrying amount is CU 100.000 (= transaction price). In this case negative fair value adjustment due to credit risk at initial recognition in CU 45.000 should increase amount of allowances for ECL. How should we, in respect of gross carrying amount in the example, define original exposures for the purpose of including in COREP and LE templates, in accordance with option A or option B?

  • Legal act: Regulation (EU) No 575/2013 (CRR)
  • COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Regulation (EU) No 680/2014 - ITS on supervisory reporting of institutions (repealed)