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The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a Report on the impact of implementing the final Basel III reforms in the EU. The full Basel III implementation, in 2028, would result in an average increase of 15.4% on the current Tier 1 minimum required capital of EU banks. The results do not reflect the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on participating banks as the reference date of this impact assessment is December 2019.

The United Kingdom (UK) left the European Union (EU) on 31 January 2020. Under the Withdrawal Agreement reached between the EU and UK, EU law applies in the UK during a transition period until 31 December 2020. This means that EU law will stop to apply in the UK as of 1 January 2021, and from that date onwards, UK financial institutions not holding a valid authorisation from the supervisory authorities in the EU will lose the right to provide financial services in the EU.

The Joint Committee of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) – ESMA, EBA and EIOPA – wish to highlight the impact in the change of status of ‘Simple, Transparent and Standardised’ (STS) securitisation transactions after the end of the Transition Period on 31 December 2020.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today final draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) on how institutions are to calculate the own funds requirements for foreign-exchange and commodity risk stemming from banking book positions under the FRTB standardised and internal model approaches.

After closely monitoring the developments of the COVID-19 pandemic and, in particular, the impact of the second COVID-19 wave and the related government restrictions taken in many EU countries, the European Banking Authority (EBA) has decided to reactivate its Guidelines on legislative and non-legislative moratoria. This reactivation will ensure that loans, which had previously not benefitted from payment moratoria, can now also benefit from them. The role of banks to ensure the continued flow of lending to clients remains of utmost importance and with the reactivation of these Guidelines, the EBA recognises the exceptional circumstances of the second COVID-19 wave. The EBA revised Guidelines, which will apply until 31 March 2021, include additional safeguards against the risk of an undue increase in unrecognised losses on banks’ balance sheet.

The European Banking Authority (EBA), the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs), have today published a final report with draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) proposing to amend the Commission Delegated Regulation on the risk mitigation techniques for OTC derivatives not cleared by a CCP (bilateral margin requirements) under the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR).

The European Banking Authority (EBA) publishes today a Report on significant risk transfer (SRT) in securitisation transactions, which includes a set of detailed recommendations to the European Commission on the harmonisation of practices and processes applicable to the SRT assessment. The EBA proposals aim to enhance the efficiency, consistency and predictability of the supervisory SRT assessment within the current securitisation framework.

Piers Haben, Director of the Banking, Markets, Innovation and Consumers department at the EBA, spoke about a multi-layered approach to regulation at the event "What to regulate? How to regulate? Who should regulate?" organised by the European Association for Banking and Financial Law. In his speech, Piers Haben highlighted the EBA's approach towards innovative applications of technology in the financial sector in accordance with the principle of technological neutrality.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a first assessment of the use of COVID-19 moratoria and public guarantees across the EU banking sector. COVID-19 related moratoria on loan repayments provided breathing space to borrowers across many countries with many banks reporting that loans under moratoria represented a significant share of their total loans. The use of moratoria was particularly widespread for SMEs and commercial real estate but were also important for mortgage loans in some countries. While public guarantees were used to a lesser extent, they allowed banks to provide new lending to many companies impacted by the crisis. The EBA will be closely monitoring the evolution of moratoria and public guarantee schemes (PGSs) in the following quarters.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today a Report on the effects of the unwind mechanism of the liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) over a three-year period, from the end of 2016 to the first quarter of 2020. Overall, the empirical evidence does not support the hypothesis that the unwind mechanism has a detrimental impact on the business and risk profile of credit institutions.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its Report on the benchmarking of national loan enforcement frameworks across EU Member States, in response to the EU Commission’s call for advice. The Report introduces for the first time a set of benchmarks for bank loan recovery and identifies areas where the divergence in the national insolvency regimes is wider.  In addition, the Report provides an overview of the characteristics of insolvency regimes that help explain the differences across the EU.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today the final methodology, draft templates and template guidance for the 2021 EU-wide stress test along with the key milestones of the exercise. The methodology and templates include some targeted changes compared to the postponed 2020 exercise, such as the recognition of FX effects for certain P&L items, and the treatment of moratoria and public guarantees in relation to the current Covid-19 crisis. The stress test exercise will be launched in January 2021 with the publication of the macroeconomic scenarios and the results published by 31 July 2021.

José Manuel Campa, Chairperson of the European Banking Authority (EBA) delivered today his openings remarks at the 2020 EBA Policy Research Workshop on the impacts, risks and opportunities of new technologies in the banking sector. The Chairperson underlined the importance of the application of new technologies in the banking sector in a period of increased experimentation and roll-out of new technologies across the EU financial sector and immense technology-enabled change.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) announced today that its 2020 Risk Assessment Report and transparency exercise with bank by bank data will be released on Friday 11 December at 18:00 CET.

Jose Manuel Campa, Chairperson of the European Banking Authority (EBA) delivered today a keynote speech at the XVII International Professional Conference on Good Corporate Governance, where he highlighted the corporate governance challenges faced by the financial sector.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) reminds financial institutions affected by the end of the transition period to finalise the full execution of their contingency plans in accordance with the conditions agreed with relevant competent authorities before the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020. The EBA also reminds institutions to ensure adequate communication regarding their preparations and possible changes to any affected EU customers.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today revised final draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) to specify how to identify the indicators of global systemic importance and revised Guidelines on their disclosure. The need for this revision was prompted by the revised framework introduced by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) in July 2018 to identify global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) as well as by the new requirements laid down in the fifth Capital Requirements Directive (CRD V), which recognise the importance of cross-border activities within the European Banking Union area.

​​​​​​​The Joint Board of Appeal of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs – European Banking Authority, European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, and European Securities and Markets Authority) published today its decision in relation to an alleged non-application of Union law by six national competent authorities brought by Mr. Howerton against the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA). In its decision, the Board of Appeal dismisses the Appellant’s claim as inadmissible as the facts described do not seem to involve insurances and occupational pension funds or any other subject-matter within the remit of EIOPA nor of the Board of Appeal.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today an Opinion setting out how prudential supervisors should consider money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/TF) risks in the context of the Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP). This Opinion forms part of the EBA’s ongoing work to strengthen the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing in Europe.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its second report on how the industry has implemented the EBA Guidelines on Product Oversight and Governance Arrangements (POG). It identifies good practices of financial institutions and concludes that many of them do not sufficiently put the required focus on ensuring that consumers’ needs are met in line with the Guidelines. Therefore, the EBA encourages financial institutions to ensure that the interests, objectives and characteristics of consumers are taken into account when applying POG arrangements, in order to avoid consumer detriment.