Press releases

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a response to a letter it had received from a law firm regarding the case of a reclassification by an institution of some specific grandfathered own funds instruments. The EBA also addressed this issue through its Q&A process. In particular, Q&A 2018_4417 (Own funds - Reclassification of own funds instruments from a grandfathered category to a fully eligible category and purpose of grandfathering provision ), clarifies in more general terms the appropriate prudential treatment for such cases.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today some initial observations on the post-implementation impact of IFRS 9 on EU banks. This exercise, which builds on the two pre-implementation impact assessments published in November 2016 and July 2017, is mainly based on data extracted from institutions’ supervisory reporting. The initial observations from this exercise are consistent with the forecasts of the second EBA impact assessment report. The report also identifies some areas for ongoing scrutiny and further work from an EBA perspective.

The European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) published today two joint draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) to amend the RTS on the clearing obligation and risk mitigation techniques for non-cleared OTC derivatives. These standards provide a specific treatment for simple, transparent and standardised (STS) securitisation to ensure a level playing field with covered bonds. They are required for the proper implementation of the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) and will amend the current regulation on the clearing obligation and risk mitigation techniques on OTC derivatives not cleared by central counterparties (CCPs).

The European Banking Authority (EBA) launched today a consultation to amend the Commission’s Implementing Regulation on benchmarking of internal models to adjust the benchmarking portfolios and reporting requirements in view of the benchmarking exercise it will carry out in 2020. The proposed changes aim at simplifying the portfolio’s structure for the credit risk part of the exercise, and getting more insights into the model used for pricing for the market risk part of the exercise. The consultation will run until 1 February 2019.

As a follow up to its June 2018 Opinion on financial institutions' preparedness for the UK withdrawal from the EU, the European Banking Authority (EBA) today reminds affected financial institutions to maintain their efforts in effective contingency planning and to increase their efforts in communicating to customers. The EBA urges such institutions to take its Opinion into careful consideration and to swiftly proceed with advising customers on the specific implications stemming from the UK withdrawal from the EU.

In its meeting on 12 December 2018, the Board of Supervisors of the European Banking Authority (EBA) decided to carry out its next EU-wide stress test in 2020, in line with its previous decision to aim for a biennial exercise. The EBA will start immediately to prepare the methodology for the 2020 stress test exercise. This decision has been communicated to the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission. In 2019, the EBA will perform its regular annual transparency exercise.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) publishes today its final Guidelines on disclosure of non- performing and forborne exposures. The disclosure will allow market participants and stakeholders to have a better picture of the quality of the banks’ assets, the main features of their non-performing and forborne exposures, and in the case of more troubled banks, the distribution of the problematic assets and the value of the collateral backing those assets.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its annual report on risks and vulnerabilities in the EU banking sector. The report is accompanied by the results of the EBA's 2018 EU-wide transparency exercise, which provide detailed information, in a comparable and accessible format, for 130 banks across the EU. Overall, the EU banking sector has continued to benefit from the positive macroeconomic developments in most European countries, which contributed to the increase in lending, further strengthening of banks’ capital ratios and improvements in asset quality. Profitability remains low on average and has not yet reached sustainable levels.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) issued today a call for expressions of interest to participate in the its working group on Application Programming Interfaces under PSD2 (WG-API). The group will be composed of EBA staff, national competent authorities and representatives of a variety of external stakeholders, and will be chaired by the EBA.

<p>The European Banking Authority (EBA) today launched a consultation on its draft Guidelines on ICT and security risk management. These Guidelines establish requirements for credit institutions, investment firms and payment service providers (PSPs) on the mitigation and management of their information and communication technology (ICT) risks and aim to ensure a consistent and robust approach across the Single market. The consultation runs until 13 March 2019.</p>

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its final Guidelines, which will provide a harmonised interpretation of the criteria for the securitisation to be eligible as simple, transparent and standardised (STS) on a cross-sectoral basis throughout the Union. These Guidelines will play a crucial role in the new EU securitisation framework that becomes applicable on 1 January 2019, by providing a single point of consistent interpretation of the STS criteria for all entities involved in the STS securitisation including originators, sponsors, investors, competent authorities and third party STS verifiers.

The Board of Supervisors of the European Banking Authority (EBA) has launched today an open selection procedure for the appointment of a new Chairperson following the appointment of the EBA’s current Chairperson, Andrea Enria, to be the Chair of the Supervisory Board of the Single Supervisory Mechanism from 1 January 2019.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) issued today a revised list of validation rules in its Implementing Technical Standards (ITS) on supervisory reporting highlighting those, which have been deactivated either for incorrectness or for triggering IT problems. Competent Authorities throughout the EU are informed that data submitted in accordance with these ITS should not be formally validated against the set of deactivated rules.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its final Guidelines on the conditions that account servicing payment service providers (ASPSPs) must meet in order to be exempted from the obligation to implement the fallback mechanism under the Regulation (EU) 2018/389 on strong customer authentication and common and secure communication (RTS on SCA&CSC). The Guidelines aim at providing clarity to ASPSPs and national competent authorities (CAs) regarding the elements that should be considered for the purpose of an exemption and at ensuring a consistent application of the conditions for an exemption across the 28 EU Member States.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) announced today that its 2018 Risk Report and transparency exercise with bank by bank data will be released on Friday 14 December at 17:00 UK time (18:00 CET).