Basel Capital Accord

Known as the Basel Accord. Policy agreement on the supervision of banks, developed in 1988 by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. The Accord aims to achieve international convergence in the measurement of capital adequacy of banks and to establish minimum capital standards. The Accord is soon to be replaced with another Accord which will change banking regulation through its rules on the amount of regulatory capital that banks will be required to hold to cover credit, market and operational risks, supervisory issues, economic capital and interest rate risk and disclosure requirements.

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USA

Basel Accord; Also known as Basel I and the Basel Capital Accord.

Policy agreement on the supervision of banks, developed in 1988 by the Basel Committee. The Accord aims to achieve international agreement on the measurement of capital adequacy of banks and to establish minimum capital standards.

In 2004 the Basel Committee published Basel II, which is based on three "pillars":

• Pillar 1 - banks must determine their eligible capital and minimum capital requirements in relation to credit risk, operational risk and market risk taken on by the bank.

• Pillar 2 - a supervisory review process whereby supervisors are required to assess how well banks are assessing their capital requirements relative to the risks they are exposed to, and to intervene where necessary.

• Pillar 3 - market discipline, via a requirement for banks to disclose to their peers key information.

In December 2007, US bank regulators published the rule for US implementation of the capital adequacy framework set out in Basel II, that is mandatory for some US banks and optional for others.