As a result of the recent financial crisis, international banking regulators developed global standards to greatly increase the financial and capital strength of banks, focusing on those for internationally active banking organizations. In addition to adopting the new capital requirements, the regulators also realized that it was essential for banks to disclose their compliance with these new requirements to the market in the most usable manner. The regulators understood that there needed to be a consistent approach to making required disclosures so that the market could evaluate more effectively across banks—in effect, being able to compare apples with apples, instead of first having to parse through myriad pieces of data in order to develop an effective comparison. Recently, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision of the Bank for International Settlements finalized new requirements regarding certain uniform and consistent disclosures of a bank’s compliance with bank regulatory requirements that will enable a more effective comparative review across a group of banks.1
While the standards still need to be adopted by individual jurisdictions, they are scheduled to be effective from the end of 2016. This month’s column will discuss these new disclosure requirements.
