Annual Report 2009 - European Banking Authority - Europa

10
OVERVIEW OF WORK
11
OVERVIEW OF WORK
3.2
CEBS’s Response to the Crisis
3.2.1
EU-Wide Stress Testing
and Assessment of Risks
and Vulnerabilities of the
EU Banking Sector
The financial crisis has prompted more attention to
the assessment of the risks and vulnerabilities of the
EU banking sector and in 2009 CEBS has continued
conducting its regular assessments of a sample of the
largest EU cross-border banking groups, focusing on
risks and vulnerabilities, banks’ management actions and
supervisory responses.
These micro-prudential risk assessments were conducted
in a bottom-up fashion and from a forward-looking
perspective, based on the assessments of a sample of
European cross-border banking groups carried out by
the respective colleges of supervisors. These were then
aggregated and submitted to the EFC-FST meetings in
March and September 2009.
In addition to the regular risk assessments, 2009 was
marked by the conduct of the first pan-European bottomup
stress testing exercise coordinated by CEBS. In May
2009, the ECOFIN mandated CEBS to coordinate, in cooperation
with the European Commission and the ECB,
an EU-wide forward-looking stress test of the banking
system, building on common guidelines and scenarios,
for a sample of 22 major European cross-border banking
groups. The objective of the exercise was to increase the
level of aggregate information available to policy makers in
assessing the resilience of the European financial system.
The exercise was conducted in a bottom-up fashion,
where participating supervisors and banks ran the
commonly agreed scenarios, taking into account
the specificities and risk profiles of the participating
institutions. The results were reported to the October
2009 meeting of the ECOFIN. Aggregate high level
information on the results was published on the
CEBS’s website 7 .
NEXT STEPS
In 2010 CEBS will continue its work on the microprudential
analysis of the risks and vulnerabilities
of the EU banking sector, further enhancing the
scope and methodologies used and ensuring better
integration of this work into the joint assessments of
institutions done by the colleges of supervisors. CEBS
will also look into the transition of this work into the
new EU supervisory framework, where the EBA will
have further responsibilities for the micro-prudential
assessment of the EU banking sector.
At the request of the ECOFIN, in 2010 CEBS will
coordinate another EU-wide stress test aimed at
assessing the overall level of resilience of the banking
system and also providing information on the
dependence of EU banks on public support and on
the amount of capital available for further lending in
the context of exit strategies.
7 Press release on the results of the EU wide stress testing exercise: http://www.c-ebs.org/getdoc/629d8941-3f2a-4a7c-a180-c68208f8b005/CEBS-2009-180-Annex-2-%28Press-release-from-CEBS%29.aspx