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The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has proposed tailoring its system for pricing banks' insurance premiums to correspond with new Basel capital requirements.
July 15 -
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. proposed several assessment-pricing changes to correspond with the Basel III regime, including altering how highly complex banks report counterparty risk.
July 15
WASHINGTON The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. finalized a rule on Tuesday that spells out the formula banks will be required to use when determining how much they will have to pay into the insurance fund that protects against bank runs.
The final rule that goes into effect Jan. 1 will change how a handful of the most complex institutions measure counterparty exposure by requiring them to use the international Basel III "standardized" approach rather than internal models. The result will likely be that some of the biggest banks will pay higher assessments into the Deposit Insurance Fund while the vast majority of banks will still pay the same premiums.
The FDIC said that allowing six of the most highly complex institutions to use internal models to measure counterparty risk for determining their assessments resulted in lower premiums without a corresponding reduction in risk.
"I do want to support and confirm your decision on the use of internal models or not letting [the most complex institutions] use internal models," FDIC Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig said to staff during a board meeting on Tuesday.
He added that allowing banks to use their own models leads to inconsistent measures of risk.
U.S. regulators finalized rules in 2013 and earlier this this year that, among others things, implement general capital requirements required by the international Basel III accord and impose a tougher "leverage" ratio on large banks. Because the FDIC uses the capital ratios as one of its measures of risk, it sought to align its assessment system with the new capital requirements.
"It is important that the capital categories we use for deposit insurance assessments appropriately reflect the changes in the capital rules to maintain consistency in risk measurement and not increase reporting burden for smaller banks," FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said.
