Regulation of shadow banking

4
bankenverband
Workstream I: Banks’ interactions with
shadow banking entities
In Workstream I, the FSB seeks to address the systemic
risks posed by the shadow banking sector through
indirect regulation. Its aim is to reduce the systemic
risks carried by shadow banking entities by regulating
regular banks. To do so, the FSB looked at three areas:
1. Prudential consolidation of banks’ interactions with
shadow banking entities.
2. Introduction of prudential limits for banks’ (large)
exposures to shadow banking entities.
3. A possible increase in capital requirements for banks’
exposures to shadow banking entities (e.g. inclusion
of investments in funds).
through approach (LTA), a bank is required to riskweight
the underlying exposures of the fund as if
the exposures were held directly by the bank. Banks
can use the mandate-based approach (MBA) if the
conditions for applying the LTA are not met. Under
the MBA, risk weighting is based on the information
contained in a fund’s mandate or in the national
regulations governing such investment funds. If
neither of these two approaches can be applied,
the fall-back approach (FBA) must be used. The FBA
requires a bank to apply a 1,250% risk weight to its
equity investment. These standards now have to be
transposed into national law.
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) only
presented regulatory proposals on areas 2 and 3 above
in the course of 2013, in its consultative documents
on the “Supervisory framework for measuring
and controlling large exposures” and the “Capital
requirements for banks’ equity investments in funds”. 11)
Although final rules for both areas were supposed to
be available by the end of 2013, only standards for the
capital requirements for banks’ equity investments in
funds were presented in mid-December. 12) The draft
consultative document on prudential consolidation
of shadow banking entities announced for the fourth
quarter of 2013 has not yet been published either.
The standards set for the capital requirements for
banks’ equity investments in funds, which apply
as of 2017, obligate banks to hold more capital to
cover such investments in all types of funds. Banks
have a choice of three approaches. Under the look-
This does not, however, mean that we are just at the
start of indirect regulation of shadow banking. Beyond
the FSB approach to regulating shadow banking, the
requirements for banks in regard to their transactions
with shadow banking entities and the accounting rules
for consolidation of these transactions were tightened
beforehand both in the EU and the US.
In July 2009, for example, the BCBS adopted tougher
regulation (Basel 2.5) containing, in particular, higher
securitisation and resecuritisation capital requirements
for banks. Since then collateralized debt obligations
(CDOs), based on asset-backed securities (ABSs), have
been subject to a higher risk weight.
Indirect regulation was also introduced through an
amendment of the accounting rules on consolidation
by both the International Accounting Standards
Board (IASB) in Europe and the Financial Accounting
11) See FSB Monitoring Report of November 2013: www.financialstabilityboard.org/publications/r_131114.pdf
12) FSB and IOSCO only launched consultation on this aspect in January 2014
www.financialstabilityboard.org/publications/r_140108.pdf
Regulation of shadow banking 15