From ideas to implementation – Keynote address by Stefan Ingves
Date
24/01/2013
All regulation, regardless of how strong it is, will be ineffective until put into practice. Ensuring that new regulations are actually introduced and applied at national level is therefore an important part of the work of the Basel Committee. So said Stefan Ingves, Governor of Sveriges Riksbank and Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), in a speech given at a joint conference organised by the BCBS, the Financial Stability Institute and the South African Reserve Bank in Cape Town, South Africa, on 24 January 2013.
He also pointed out that the Basel Committee still has some policy work to do with regard to addressing the necessary structural adjustments required by the financial crisis. Firstly, it needs to develop and reinforce the regulatory and supervisory framework for the financial sector. An important part of this work is the Basel III reforms. However, Mr Ingves emphasized that the Committee's work on producing a special framework for global systemically-important banks, the review of the rules for the trading book and, not least, the recently completed update of the Core principles for effective banking supervision are all essential elements of the enhanced policy framework.
Secondly, it is important that the regulations are implemented. Thus far, the Basel Committee has conducted detailed assessments of the final regulations adopted in three jurisdictions and six more have been initiated or are in the planning stage. Moreover, banks' risk weights are being examined to assess whether the regulations are being applied properly. Mr Ingves concluded by saying that even though the policy work is nearing completion, much remains to be done with regard to implementation.
