The EBA updates the Guidelines on the specification and disclosure of systemic importance indicators

The European Banking Authority (EBA) today published its updated Guidelines on the specification and disclosure of systemic importance indicators, which are applied by the largest institutions in the EU whose leverage ratio exposure measure exceeds EUR 200 bn. Acting as a central data hub in the disclosure process, the EBA updates data on G-SIIs on a yearly basis and provides user-friendly tools to aggregate it across the EU.

Following the targeted revisions in 2022 to the EBA Guidelines to consider the recognition of the European Banking Union specificities within the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) framework for global systemically important bank (G-SIBs), these amending Guidelines introduce additional changes and clarifications regarding indicators relevant for the identification process of global systemically important institutions (G-SIIs).

The revised Guidelines include in the Annex the Basel reporting template as of end-2022. A consolidated version of the Guidelines is also available.

Background and legal basis

• The identification of a G-SII, which leads to higher capital buffer requirements, falls under the responsibility of national competent authorities and this process is updated by December 15 every year. The identification is based on the disclosure of global denominators and G-SIB exercise results, which are expected to be published by the BCBS and the Financial Stability Board (FSB) in November each year. Any higher capital buffer requirements will then apply after about one year from the publication by competent authorities of banks' scoring results, thus allowing institutions enough time to adjust to the new buffer requirement. 
• The EBA Guidelines on disclosure of G-SIIs, as amended by EBA/GL/2023/10 , define uniform requirements for disclosing the values used during the identification and scoring process of G-SIIs, in line with the internationally agreed standards developed by the BCBS and the FSB. The EBA supports the disclosure by EU authorities of the cross-jurisdictional indicators and underlying data items needed to calculate the parallel set of scores specific to European Banking Union banks.To promote a level playing field in the EU and to increase transparency in the internal financial market, the current level of disclosure goes beyond the minimum standards required by the BCBS, both in terms of granularity of the disclosed information and applicable scope of institutions. Consequently, some of the group-specific templates currently published belong to institutions that have not contributed directly to the BCBS's G-SIB exercise.
• The Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) on the specification of the methodology for the identification and definition of subcategories of G-SIIs, and Guidelines on disclosure of G-SIIs have been developed in accordance with Directive 2013/36/EU (Capital Requirements Directive - CRD IV) on the basis of internationally agreed standards, such as the framework established by the BCBS and the FSB.