The 2008 financial crisis mandated that central banks and banking regulators work together to prevent another global financial meltdown. Many new regulations were proposed and implemented during the ensuing years, both domestically and internationally. In 2010, top bankers and regulators from 27 countries met in Basel, Switzerland, as part of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, and agreed on a new system of international regulatory rules known collectively as “Basel III.”
One leading goal of the new framework, later amended at a subsequent meeting in 2013, was to make banks more capable of absorbing shocks to the global financial system by increasing capital reserve requirements. Although the Basel III rules were drafted by an international committee, it was up to individual member nations to implement rules that enforced the new regulatory scheme.1
