A new post-Brexit trade arrangement between the UK and the EU will be complex to negotiate, and likely to be made more complex by rejection trauma. From the point of view of long term economic growth, stable financial markets and cross border peaceful cooperation, there does not appear to be good news. Position papers like the Japanese give strong hints on what is needed, but also emphasize that the UK needs automatic access to the single market more than the EU needs access to UK markets. Even if the overall size of the European economy might shrink if London suffers, the transfer of even only some crumbs of its current business would mean additional local jobs in Amsterdam, Frankfurt or Paris, trumping any benefits of keeping the London financial markets alive.
So, how to turn it around, and make the shortsighted Brexit vote (costing UK voters jobs, subsidies and workers protection) and a lack of decisive political action from UK and EU legislators to avoid this course of action, into something that would benefit Europe as a whole?
One route that has not yet received sufficient attention is a renegotiated EEA (European Economic Area, consisting of the EU member states plus three non-EU member states). So far, the ‘Norway-option’ or EEA has only been mentioned as a halfway house, where the UK could seek temporary refuge under the current provisions of the EEA Treaty (if the EEA member states would be willing to allow this). Such refuge would allow continued access to the EU single market, as well as possibly to a range of existing trade agreements with third countries. However, like for the current non-EU EEA countries, there is a rather high price to pay for single market access via this route. The current EEA Treaty of 1993 (between the EU member states plus Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland) allows access to the EU for the three in exchange for abiding fully by EU single market legislation and paying into the EU budget, on both of which they have no say at all. In essence they are being taxed without being represented (in exchange for single market access). For instance new banking requirements have to be accepted by the three countries in exactly the way they are agreed by the EU member states. This was kind of ok at the time, when for instance EU banking legislation was still relatively low key and required implementation by local legislators into local law, but more intrusive EU regulations and directives have de facto increased the transfer of Norwegian, Icelandic and Liechtenstein’ sovereignty to the EU. The Swiss were key drivers behind the negotiations for the 1993 EEA Treaty, but before it entered into force they opted out in a referendum. Swiss banks and stock exchanges, and other businesses for which there are no specific arrangements to access the EU suffer as a result. Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland have gained access for their banks, but they suffer from having no vote in the council, no vote in parliament and no vote at EBA and ESMA.
The economic and political interests of the UK on the one hand and Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein may thus well be aligned for a new treaty that keeps the EEA benefits, but adds a bit of balance to the sovereignty transfer. That is, if the UK can indeed convince Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland that it can act decisively, and in their common interest instead of only its own (of which Iceland may need some convincing). They might do so, if a revamped EEA deal could bring back some of their sovereignty on single market issues, and there is not only a fair voting arrangement with the EU member states, but also amongst the non-EU member states of the revamped EEA. Arrangements on voting on new legislation could for example be based on the Eurozone ins and outs voting arrangements at EBA, though it would thus need to be drafted to ensure that the ‘outs’ are not dominated by any single non-EU EEA member state. Adding the economic and financial services heft of the UK and Switzerland onto the existing access to the single market of the non-EU EEA states, might sway the EU member states to add such a provision to the EEA Treaty.
One of the first things people note when they start viagra fast delivery like it adding Acai to their diet so as to get all the essential nutrients from it. Movie locations in California vary from cialis soft 20mg urban city setting to beautiful scenery of hills and beaches, all of which help in fighting cancer.No cycling: Traditional bike seats are leaf shaped with a nose at the front. As an added bonus, products like this tend to improve the over all well being of person. buying tadalafil tablets He said he didn’t know it well, which http://cute-n-tiny.com/cute-animals/cats-in-halloween-costumes/ purchase viagra no prescription I found hard to believe because I had seen him kick a wall harder than a donkey kicks a pervert. For the UK becoming part of a wider single market EEA renegotiation instead of being stuck in a bilateral post-Brexit negotiation would solve several EU/UK problems in one go. Gifts such as continued single market access, a say in financial services legislation and a more ‘sovereign’ vote on single market initiatives can more easily be granted to the joint non-EU EEA states than only to the UK. It would allow a path for the Swiss to opt in (solving their own internal referendum troubles on free movement of EU citizens), and perhaps even some of the other EU candidates that might be more acceptable to EU-voters as single market EEA candidates than as EU candidates. Last but not least it would allow the single market to remain intact and reduce negative fallout on joint external interests such as security and defence.
It would still require some hard choices on customs, taxes, security, the EFTA trade agreements and especially on passport free travel and migration. For instance the likely limitation cross border long term migration rights only to people in jobs or after retirement from a local job is a common electoral issue for both the Swiss and the British (following referenda in both countries). To gain or regain access to the single market with such a painful sacrifice for the EU member states, would require equally hurtful sacrifices of the Swiss and UK negotiators.
Which price for instance the UK wants to offer up first to Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, and then to the EU member states would be up to it to consider. Any offer would need to be of the level of the level of sacrifice in internal UK politics as e.g. exchanging the pound for the euro. Schengen accession and doing its share on burden sharing in finance or refugees would be a good starting point, as it would ease existing troubles with e.g. France on the Calais encampment. A prudential regime for wholesale markets, desirable from a macro-prudential point of view, could be another offer, building on the AIFMD regime for wholesale investment funds. Regardless of the exact result of mutually beneficial EEA renegotiations, this route would provide the UK with the opportunity to show again why it used to be the most influential and effective EU member state alongside France and Italy, before this influence was sacrificed on the altar of national short term electoral considerations. Changing the subject from post Brexit trade agreements to renegotiating the EEA would also provide EU negotiators with cover for granting favours to the UK, allow Switzerland a better entrance to the single market, and right an existing wrong in the EU/EEA of taxation without representation for Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Defaulting on your obligations is a clear event. You did not pay when you should, you did not show up when you promised you would, you did not deliver the assets for which you were paid. In financial contracts the list of clear-cut defaults is often expanded by contractually defined additional ‘events of default’. Such events of default could include many things that normal people would not call a default, such as reorganizing the group of which the obligor is part, or if the obligor suffers a credit rating decrease. Normally, these ‘events’ serve to enable the creditor to have a say in restructurings and such. This allows them to avoid their rights being eviscerated by e.g. removing cash out of the legal entity they have a future claim on.

Default reinvented

Banking legislators have also engaged in such reinvention of the term default as applicable to any credit obligation. The starting position is that there are consequences for the amount of financial buffers that a bank needs to hold for each claim on the obligor after it has not been paid for a certain number of days after they became due. Like the drafters of contractual ‘events of default’, legislators have tried to make the calculation of the required amount of financial buffers more forward looking, and include events when there are ‘just’ signs of possible future non-payment. For IRB banks this already happened in the old CRD after the introduction of the Basel II version of the capital accord. Under the new CRR, the forward-looking element also applies to banks that use the standardised models to calculate credit risk capital requirements.

The CRR requires supervisors and banks to treat obligors credit as ‘defaulted’ when there are early warning signs that indicate that the obligor is unlikely to pay in full. If such default as defined in the CRR and its predecessors happens, banks on the standardised approach need to hold more capital against some or even all the claims they have on the obligor (risk weighting them at a headline rate of 150% instead of at the risk weights that would apply on non-defaulted claims of e.g. 0% for sovereign bonds, 20% for unrated banks short term debt, 20% for highly rated banks long term debt, or 100% on unrated corporates; and equivalent changes in the calculation of the probability to default – PD – factor in IRB calculations). Such a default – as in a failure to pay a due claim by an obligor – does not yet trigger obligatory losses. Once losses are certain, they would have to be written down from the bank’s capital. Instead, a default only means that more capital needs to be held against the claim to buffer against unexpected losses. Only if events subsequently or simultaneously progress negatively and losses are relatively certain, such ‘expected loss’ needs to be fully deducted from the CRR-financial buffers. As can be expected, writing down losses is unpopular, but even having to increase financial buffers for a loan after a loan has already been granted can be costly, and thus unpopular with the banks. If the bank is important and thinly capitalised, it may even be unpopular with supervisors.

CRR examples

Luckily for less diligent banks, most of the situations that the CRR subsequently references as examples of ‘unlikeliness’ to pay in full are drafted to be dependent on their own action. If they for example act in a way that acknowledges that the debtor is in problems (for instance by applying for the bankruptcy of the obligor), they also need to increase their financial buffers. As long as the bank itself does not actually take action or draw conclusions, they can avoid triggering the obligation to acknowledge CRR-default until well after an actual default has occurred, namely until 90 days after the obligor has actually failed to pay. For IRB banks it can even be postponed until 180 days have passed without payment after a claim for interest or principal became due in the few member states that use a supervisory discretion to deal with apparently slow payment systems or for instance badly behaved debtors in the public sector. This national discretion expired for the smaller banks that use the standardised approach already in 2011, but the large IRB banks in countries with apparently slow payment traditions such as France and Great Britain can continue to treat slow payers – e.g. municipalities – as if they are solid obligors. Even if the stricter 90 days is applied, this still means that less diligent banks can escape increasing their financial buffers for at least 3 months after a claim became due. This is not very forward looking, unless the bank is proactive in managing its risky exposures and wants to pay attention – as is the CRR obligation – to indications of non-payment.

The indicators for unlikeliness to pay – as copied unchanged from the old IRB provisions in the CRD – include that the bank recognises a significant perceived decline in credit quality, sells (part of) the exposure at a relevant loss, agrees to a distressed restructuring with negative financial adjustments, asks for the bankruptcy (!) of the client, or if the client actually is bankrupt. This fine example of legislative prose means that according to legislators even a court proclaiming the bankruptcy of the debtor is only an indicator of unlikeliness to pay, and still only means that the exposure to the bankrupt client needs to be weighed at 150%, unless the bank itself determines that loss is certain and the exposure written down accordingly (after which they can risk weight the reduced value of the exposure at a lower risk weight again).

No consistency in application

Remarkably, as part of their monitoring EBA and the SSM supervisors have found that not all banks apply the rules in the same manner, and that the national interpretations (and application of the 180 days of non-payment of past due payments before being forced to acknowledge that the debtor may be troubled) lead to different capital levels for debt portfolios with the same risk profile. Some banks delay finding an event of default, and thus delay applying a higher risk weight or PD to the calculation for the minimum amount of capital they need to hold. Some government bodies are allowed some extra time by the local supervisors to pay their debts, even though the risk is the same or higher than in a similar debt just across the border in another member state. Some less principled banks could even opt to sell almost due bonds owed by a troubled debtor at (fire sale) market prices without formally acknowledging this as an indicator of default, to avoid having to consider whether the rest of the debt of that obligor in default when the debtor fails to fork over the repayment of the short dated bonds. CRR legislators were aware of the issue, but failed to reach a compromise on a solution. Instead, they have added to the existing definition an order to EBA the order to monitor the application of this definition, to come up by 2017 with a report on the 90 or 180 days past due issue, and (without a deadline) to provide non-binding guidelines on how default should be understood and applied by banks in the EU. The SSM has identified the 90/180 days issue as a major impediment to its working practices, and is aiming to pre-empt the 2017 EBA review for the Eurozone member states (of the couple of member state competent authorities that apply this leniency, only the UK supervisors would be able to continue to apply the supervisory discretion, as they will not be bound by the ECB choice on behalf of the Eurozone competent authorities).

As acknowledging the potential for default is core to preparing for recessions and asset based crisis at banks, it is good that EBA has already spent some of its scarce resources to find indicators on how a well set up bank that diligently monitors the credit quality of its debtors should be able to avoid its own future default by taking timely action should do this. Their consultation paper is not a perfect paper yet, but nonetheless it raises the standard for less diligent banks. It for instance implies more clearly that banks cannot limit themselves to the CRR examples of indicators, but actually should look for indicators that the obligor may perhaps not pay to determine whether it is unlikely to pay. Self evident as that sounds, it may be good to reinforce the main rule of heightening financial buffers when it becomes more likely that those are needed, not looking only at the badly written subsequent examples in the CRR provisions, that might lead to fatal delays to shore up buffers when e.g. your sovereign is failing, or when one of the major banks of your country is failing.

(Un)intended consequences?

The consultation paper also raises question, however. Was the spirit of these rules – to prepare for future write-downs by all types of obligors – applied in full in this manner by banks (and their supervisors) when the possibility of default was high in the last few years? For instance when the US government shut down, or when several Eurozone countries were (not yet sure that they would be) bailed out? It is unlikely that this was the case. A part explanation may be that for member states it may have been equally welcome to have optimistic banks that do not apply the indicators of unlikeliness to pay too diligently, and preferably not at all to the government itself, to large banks and to protected sectors. The consultation paper appears to ignore that the same rules should also be applied to these more sensitive types of obligors. The indicators mentioned appear most relevant if thinking of debt of households and loans to smaller companies. They lack clearly defined indicators derived from financial markets that would be much more relevant to larger obligors. The current references to market movements are vague, and thus fail to achieve harmonisation. It would be helpful to e.g. define a certain percentage of losses in share value over a relatively short period of time as a good indicator of potential default (which according to the draft guidelines now need only be considered when fair value in the profit or loss account needs to be reassessed under accounting rules). Rising CDS values would be another good and clear indicator, or high implicit interest rates of bonds traded in the secondary markets, as seen for instance when Fortis or RBS or AIG or Lehman failed, or when Greece defaulted on its original bonds by restructuring those bonds held by private sector banks, insurers, pension funds and consumers.

The macroprudential repercussions of banks being forced to start increase their financial buffers for larger numbers of small obligors or for the potential default of one or more systemically relevant obligors also do not appear to have been considered. Even though the lack of macroprudential awareness is a design flaw of the CRR-article, the guidelines could have helpfully added text on what to do when a systemically important private or public sector entity shows such signs, or if a specific industrial sector or the whole of the private sector in a member state starts to show signs of stress. In that case supervisors and central banks need to be informed of such signals, and in turn should be able to instruct banks to act both in line with their legal obligations to assess indicators of non-payment, but without doing systemic damage. For instance by orchestrating a joint response so that all banks prepare in the same manner (by acknowledging the potential for default of e.g. the USA under a political shutdown, Greece when the first bail-out appeared to be too optimistically structured, or any troubled bank about which rumours swirl in the financial markets). This same point applies to the proposed rules for keeping an obligor nominally in default – even it has started to pay again – to check that the default indicators have indeed permanently receded before allowing the bank to bring down the required level of capital again. As currently formulated, for instance the fact that the ECB accepts unsecured sovereign bonds of Greece again as collateral, or that a conditional new bail-out programme was politically agreed, would not have meant that the commercial banks of Greece could have brought down their increased capital levels for Greek sovereign debts. Such ECB actions are not mentioned as an indicator that all troubles are permanently over. That also applies to the question whether the USA can return to non-defaulted status quickly when a last minute deal on a budget or higher debt ceiling is agreed.

Perhaps a strict application of the law on systemically important obligors is not the intention of supervisors, and may not have been the intention of some members of the Council of the EU as co-legislator. The CRR definition of default nonetheless applies to all sorts of obligors, not only to those that are relatively irrelevant. A bank or supervisor that blatantly ignores indictors of default, and fails to increase the CRR-mandated minimum of capital in a timely manner sets itself up for liability. It thus may be good to give more clarity on the content of the legal obligation of banks and supervisors, instead of relying of regulatory forbearance and/or politically sensitive application of the CRR rules to avoid amongst others macroprudential consequences of a too strict or too late application of the definition of default.

Also see:

• Art. 110.4, 127, 178, 506 CRR 575/2013 and art. 101.5 CRD IV Directive 2013/36/EU.
• Art. 154.1 and 154.7, Annex VI part 1, chapter 10 (§61-65), Annex VII part 4, chapter 2.1 (§44-48) Recast Banking Directive 2006/48/EC (as replaced by the mentioned CRR provisions)
• EBA, Consultation paper, Guidelines on the application of the definition of default under Article 178 of Regulation (EU) 575/2013, EBA/CP/2015/15, 22 September 2015.
• ECB, Public consultation on a draft regulation of the European Central Bank on the exercise of options and discretions available in Union law, November 2015, article 4.
• EBA, overview of options and discretions.
• EBA, CEBS’s technical advice to the European Commission on options and national discretions, 17 October 2008, amongst other option 70, 113 and 151 (disclosure: at the time I was the chair of the relevant working group).
• EU Banking Supervision, Chapter 8

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The VW manipulation of its emissions testing results provides lessons for banks, insurers and their supervisors. Testlab results bear no similarity to real life survival or failure is a simple one. Bad governance structures can lead to bad decisions (as highlighted by John Plender in the FT and supported by a wide range of examples such as the DSB Bank failure in the Netherlands). Another lesson is that the testlab/models that are the basis for calculating capital requirements are prone to pressure and manipulation.

There appear to have been two stages that shifted the results in response to high-level orders to pass environmental tests and improve sales. The first is the – as I understand – industry standard in the EU that emissions are only tested in laboratory conditions on vehicles that are specially selected and prepared for this testing by stripping off all inconvenient aspects (rear view mirrors, wipers, and anything that weighs anything in the car that is not needed to make it run, such as the standard airconditioning or audio equipment). For some this is the minor league of evasion or fraud as it ‘only’ changes the hardware, and anyone actually looking would notice. Even for this type of lab-adaptation there is little relation between the car in the lab and on the road, but some people would say it remains in the nudge and wink category of how smart it is to evade the vague requirements and the light touch oversight, and the general contours of the car tested remain the same. The second stage is now provoking more outrage, as the manipulation is not in the visible hardware, but in lines of code in the software. Any instrument that supposedly cleans up the emissions but was a drag on ease of handling on the road was automatically switched off by the design of the software, except when the exact conditions of the laboratory test were found.

Though it is unlikely that executives removed the hardware from the testlab-models or wrote the software that changed the car from fake circumstances to real life riding and back, it is likely that they created the incentives to do so by demanding relative growth as compared to competitors, in the cars case by simultaneously demanding low emissions during tests so that the cars could legally be sold, and high performance so that customers would actually want to buy them, and did not bother to sufficiently check whether the product sold fit the description on issues that customers did not bother to verify or sue on, and regulators did not bother to/were not able to check.

The calculation of capital requirements is open to similar pressures. It is abstract, only important if thousands of products fail to perform at the same time, only important in the long term, and customers do not like it while the bank or insurer is alive because it heightens their costs if the bank or insurer would take it seriously. The old standardised approach for capital requirements calculation was abandoned for complex institutions because the choices made in investments were optimized by these institutions to take the highest risk/reward road within each wide basket of types of assets, such as corporate bonds. This maximized returns while minimizing costly capital requirements. The newly invented ‘internal’ models that have been introduced for banks in the 2004 Basel II accord (in the EU implemented via the 2006 version of the CRD) and will be introduced for insurers in 2016 under Solvency II allow more leeway to reward the bank or insurer if they choose a less risky product to invest in, but does expect them to take better regard of the more risky products too. Some banks are indeed relatively conservative or are being forced to be relative conservative by their supervisors, and estimate the riskiness of the assets they hold higher than the models used by their competitors estimate the same or the same type of assets. Some banks, however, are removing the airconditioning and audio systems by abandoning newly capital-costly areas such as trade finance or investment banking, while plunging collectively into low capital-costly areas, or professing high confidence in their clients or risk management systems. The result is that banks’ internal models show wildly different results, which is an indicator that some may be too lightly capitalised for the risks they run in their entire business. An additional result is that worthy areas of services are no longer provided by banks, but are either not provided, or are now provided by less regulated service providers. It is likely that more conservatively calculating banks are under pressure to become more ‘capital efficient’ in order to retain profitability and competitiveness.

The temptation to adapt the outcomes of test-results is easy to understand. Lower capital requirements (emissions) lead to the potential for acquiring more assets (making more sales) that generate higher profits and higher status for the CEO. And a slight tweak in one area that makes the boss happy does not really impact a lot on the overall capital; except of course if this happens in all areas the bank or insurer is active in. These tweaks stimulate the financial company, their shareholders and the economy as long as the bank or insurer makes no losses yet. And the internal models used by complex banks do not show with a big blinking warning whether there is internal pressure to always lean in the same direction. Fundamental attitudes towards the need for buffers or the need for speed and profits are neither measured nor checked easily, especially if the number of experts is vastly larger on the bank’s side than on the supervisors’ side. But if the general attitude at a financial company is that it is acceptable to have slight manipulations, or just slightly reducing the riskiness of the asset just by removing the dragging mirrors from the test-lab model, this risks the continued survival of the firm once it comes out. Removing trade finance already does not make the bank safer. It just makes it less well capitalised, and diminishes the value of the bank to society similar to cars with high Nox emissions in real life. Especially harmful would be if it turns out that the models used by banks are deliberately built to optimise testlab results that bear no relation to known market and firm behaviour when risks materialise. Bankers/Insurers would, however, not be unique in such manipulation. The regulated bits of internal models and the standardised models are riddled with such deliberate misdesign by lawmakers, e.g. to underestimate the riskiness of SME-loans, or to hugely underestimate the riskiness of sovereign bonds. In the end, if banks add to this, and do not compensate for design-faults in the laws that rule the design of models to calculate capital by adding voluntary layers of safety themselves, it remains deceit towards clients, investors, and society as a whole.

Though supervisors are aware of the discrepancies, they have been kicking the can down the road for a while, and there are no signs yet of an official line. The amount of capital needed for the most derelict banks – and the financial stability consequences of exposing them – may pressure them into regulatory forbearance. Though this is both understandable and damnable at the same time, such regulatory forbearance does not impact on the own responsibility of bank and insurance boards on whose watch such collective leaning or manipulation takes place by underlings who aim to please their bosses by improved headline numbers.

Safety should not be tampered with, and will not be tampered with in the long run, as the sheltered executives of VW already found out.

Also see:

• Plender, John, Poor governance at VW should have been a warning to investors, FT 30 September 2015
• Noonan, Laura, ECB doubles the time needed to review banks’ risk models, FT 16 August 2015
• EBA reports of 22 July 2015 on eba.europa.eu
• BCBS, Regulatory Consistency Assessment Programme (RCAP) Analysis of Risk-Weighted Assets for Market Risk, January 2013 (rev February 2013)
• BCBS, Regulatory Consistency Assessment Programme (RCAP) Analysis of Risk-Weighted Assets for Credit Risk in the Banking Book, July 2013
• UK FSA, A Regulatory Response to the Global Banking Crisis; Discussion Paper 09/2, March 2009, page 71-73

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• EU Banking Supervision, chapter 6.3
• Are EU Banks Safe?, chapter 4.5

Increasing mortgage loan risk weights in a depressed property market is likely to be procyclical, as would reducing risk weights in booming property market. Strangely, this procyclicality appears to be acceptable under the contemplated EBA standards on adjusting risk weights due to financial stability considerations that are currently out for consultation. The draft binding rules do not specify when they should best be adjusted up, and when down, nor how to take into account such potential procyclical effects. Nothing in the proposed binding rules clarifies at which part of the cycle this lever should be used, which is a bit odd for nominally technical rules that have as their key ingredient that a specific lever can be used for financial stability considerations.

The EBA proposals do give a clue as to what information is relevant, but mainly leave the type of response to the supervisor itself. A supervisor eager to apply the law in a conservative manner is left scratching his head as to the optimum course and timing. A supervisor eager or under political or monetary policy pressure to boost a growing economy, or to stop a sliding property market, is free to do whatever it wants even if the longer term effects might be a less safe banking system. For example, the economies of many of the member states currently need a stimulus. Increasing house prices and office prices based on cheaper lending – if banks do not need to hold so much capital – could help provide such a stimulus. Even though bad lending practices and too low risk premiums and risk buffers for mortgage loans in the USA subprime sector actually kicked off the latest worldwide crisis, the solution to help growth in the short term could be to keep risk weights low, and to keep all options open for national legislators and supervisors. As a result of such pressures it is difficult to blame EBA and its voting members for building in this leeway. However, it does mean that the new binding rules are not very useful if a supervisor or financial stability regulator would like to be able to take measures to ensure the stability of the banking sector and/or the property market. The standards instead excel in less than clear guidance such as ‘Take into account housing market developments’, which kicks in a wide-open door, and says nothing on whether rising values or buyers interest should lead to an increase in risk weighting (and thus higher capital requirements), or to a decrease in risk weighting (and thus lower capital requirements).

This leaves aside that a discussion could be had on whether a higher risk weight would be best from a technical point of view in the upslope of a boom (to stop irrational exuberance, and build up capital buffers for the eventual decline in property values a few years hence and thus in an anticyclical manner), or on the downslope towards a trough (to increase the potential for bank capital being sufficient to deal with future losses in a value-declining property market, thus limiting the scope for banks to lend to potential new purchasers and forcing them to double down capital for existing and new downward developing mortgage loans, even though for the wider economy this would be procyclical). In this light, an analysis performed by supervisors on the basis of the lengthy data sets available over the boom period and the bust in immovable property markets in almost every member state could have been used to base these standards on an analysis of the costs and benefits of heightening and reducing risk weights in each national or regional property market in the period from e.g. 2000 until now. Indicating when Dutch, Spanish, Irish or any other national supervisor in hindsight would have wished that they used the existing risk weight-adjustment instrument either in a pro- or anticyclical manner during that period might lead to useful indicators as to when it should be used in the future with the best impact on wider financial stability as well as on the resilience provided by larger bank financial buffers.

A compromise solution could be to try to aim for the upper slopes of the boom for an increase, and reduce it when property prices have gone below reasonable long term values. At the bottom of the trough this would stimulate the housing market, especially if the expected losses on the housing portfolio have already been written down in full under a possibly wider definition of default and/or lower valuation of the collateral. Higher risk weights on the remaining fully covered mortgage loans would then no longer be necessary, if – and only if – the risk weight setter is able to correctly call when a boom is under way, or when a property market recession is entering irrationally depressed territory.

It would thus be helpful if the standards clarify whether their primary target is to stabilise the immovable property market in a certain market segment, or to stabilise the banks that lend in that area even if that means restricting loans to a already plummeting property market, or both. That would also help indicate whether there is a need to coordinate across financial sectors and across banks on the standardised and IRB approach (to ensure that banks, insurers, pension funds and other non-bank mortgage loan providers increase or decrease their exposure to the market segment involved in the same manner) which I would favour, or not (to ensure that the banks are safe by being able – to put it bluntly – to offload the risky and more costly exposure to the overheated property segment, even if that is to unsuspecting insurers or securitisation-investors such as pension funds).

This overall lack of clear indicators and purposes means that I am a bit reluctant to criticise the only clear benchmark that EBA does provide, which has been referenced in the draft standards and made more concrete in the impact assessment. According to it, loss expectations should be a key factor to determine how high the risk weights should be. It is a welcome clarification of intent, and something supervisors might be benchmarked to. However, though I applaud its inclusion, this specific benchmark does clarify two things that in view of pro and anti-cyclical thinking are a bit unwelcome. The first is that higher loss expectations are expected to be the trigger for an increase in risk weighting. As soon as market based loss expectations are made the determining factor, any irrationality in the market suddenly becomes less easy to deal with. This irrationality is part of the accepted market wisdom at that time, so if for ten years prices have gone up, no one ‘expects’ losses any more. Only once the bust period actually arrives, loss expectations suddenly swing up (sometimes to irrational heights in a panic). Increasing risk weights at that point in time will only strengthen the slide into the abyss. If risk weights instead are already up when loss expectations are still close to nil, then the lever could helpfully be used to lighten the load on the way down, helping to dampen the cycle. That does, however, require supervisors actually to take a stand against ‘the sky is the limit’ politicians and realtors, which as indicated above may not be their favoured role.

Second, the table appears to indicate that the lowest risk weights are appropriate in ‘normal’ times. If so, the lever of risk weights is unavailable during the entire trough of the cycle, meaning it has no dampening effect to get the market (and the banks’ capital requirements) into a mood that indicates light at the end of the tunnel. From a macroprudential point of view, that seems unhelpful. The lowest risk weights should be only in force at the ‘apex’ of the bust, so that the lever can be used both in the downswing and the upswing. No doubt this is more the role of the ESRB to point out, but strangely their role as providers of warnings and advisors on the cyclicality of draft-rules is not visibly reflected in the EBA draft standards.

In conclusion, it may be good to re-assess and clarify some of the key concepts, main goals and direction of adjustments in the draft binding rules before they enter into force. Building upon the experience in the past crisis with a ‘in hindsight’ analysis as to when and how this tool would have been most effective and efficient would be helpful. Both changes would help shelter banking supervisors from being put under pressure to sacrifice long term bank stability against short term political pressure for economic growth.

Also see:

• The separate comment on adjusting the mortgage risk weights
• EU Banking Supervision, chapter 6.2, 6.5, 8, 18.3, 21.2-21.4, and 22.5
• 124-126 CRR
• 128.2 sub d CRR
• 164-166 CRR
• EBA consultation paper EBA/CP/2015/12 of 6 July 2015 on determining higher risk-weights

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Banks that provide mortgage loans can be subject to more or less risk depending on for instance developments in house prices and house shortages in countries or cities. This means they need to hold more financial buffers or less financial buffers depending on the risk that the loan will not be repaid in full, which shift in prudential buffer demands in turn affects housing affordability for most buyers (and thus stimulates or dampens the housing market). EBA is now consulting on the ‘regulatory standards’ on varying the risk weighting for mortgage loans for both homes (residential property) and commercial properties such as shops and offices due to such financial stability considerations. The consultation paper is fostering this discussion very helpfully, but still has some severe shortcomings if it were to become law in this way, one of them is that it only deals with the increase of the risk weight, not with the decrease thereof, the effect of this information on the market, nor the changes in prices and risk over time. Another concern is the lack of clear rules on the timing these supervisory interventions in the financial cycle, which is the subject of a separate comment.

The headline risk rate for immovable property backed loans in the standardised approach to credit risk is that they should be risk weighted at 100%. This headline risk rate is, however, only used if some rather lenient criteria set by the CRR are not fulfilled. If sufficiently backed by qualifying homes, shops or offices the risk weight is sharply reduced (to 35 or 50 %). For the internal model based approach, there is an equivalent possibility to reduce or increase the LGD factor. The result is that banks normally only have to hold a reduced amount of financial buffers on residential and commercial types of mortgage loans. The only exception is if these criteria on the relative value of the collateral to the loan are found not to be fulfilled, and – and this is the subject of the consultation – when supervisors indicate that the reduction in perceived risk is not opportune at that moment in time, or even demand an additional slice of capital by increasing the risk weighting for commercial and residential mortgage loans to up to 150%.

Lets leave aside that the definitions of the terms used are as clear as tar (of the type of definition that residential property means a property that is a residence) and thus highly likely to be moulded not only to local practices but also to the lowest risk requirements. Lets also leave aside that if the supervisors set a high risk weight of 150%, it might be miraculously decided by the bank that the collateral is no longer sufficient, in which case the back-up risk weight of 100% will start to apply in accordance with the badly worded CRR provisions. Lets focus instead on the good intention that sometimes it would be good to require more capital, and sometimes less, for the good of the immovable property market and of the individual mortgage providers active in it.

The 150% risk weight is actually not new. It existed also in previous versions of the capital requirements directives, but was one of those territories that sounded good in theory but in practice were not used. In the depths of the subprime crisis, these levers gained new attention, and even a modicum of followers. For the standardised approach, some member states have now introduced stricter requirements on the lowest risk weighting, and some member states increased the risk weighting to 100% (none yet to the maximum of 150%). For the internal model based approach, only Norway (which is outside of the EU but covered by the CRR provisions under the EEA treaty) has used the possibility to increase the LGD factor in the internal model approach to credit risk (though other supervisors, however, may have done this too in an ad hoc manner as part of the model approval process). This is one of the macro/micro prudential levers that directly impact on the banks’ capital requirements for mortgage loans, and thus on the property market in specified regions (either in a whole country like Greece, or just in overheating segments such as London or Amsterdam). The weird thing is that the proposed regulation only addresses the ‘when should the requirement go up’ question, and ignores the equally important ‘when and how should the requirement go down’.

Even though this tool formally addresses only the capital position of individual banks, it applies to each domestic and foreign bank that is active in a specific property market, and thus will impact – intentionally it appears – on market prices in that area, by increasing or decreasing mortgage availability and interest rate levels. Hopefully, a similar restriction will apply to non-bank mortgage providers, though how this is ensured for specialised institutions or e.g. insurers is equally not addressed in the CRR or consultation paper. If the risk weight change might even potentially be a market-moving event, it is as important to give clarity on when the risk weight percentage or LGD should go down as on when it should go up. If this is not immediately clear from the new contemplated laws, the supervisor will join monetary authorities in their catch 22 of never being able to increase the interest rates if the only thing holding up market prices and holding back a recession is the fact that the market does not expect such an increase in interest rates. That the monetary interest rate dilemma relates also to bond and other financial instrument prices instead of – like this specific instance of mortgage loan risk weighting – only impacts on house prices and affordability does not really matter. If the risk weight is stuck at either a high or low value due to unclear criteria and potential market moving impact, it becomes useless as a macro economic and micro prudential lever.

In addition, the proposed rules should be clear on how supervisors should determine when the risk requirement goes up, but also how they clarify to the market when it certainly will go down again, and how gradual that decline will be. As market prices in the defined segment will be impacted – at least if they are intended to be useful – both by the decision to go up and by the decision to climb down (by reducing or increasing the exposure of the banks to that segment, and making new mortgage loans more expensive or cheaper) in a parallel to the insider information rules the obligatory decision-path and the communication plan of the supervisor involved should be very clear indeed. The consultation paper is silent on the communication plan that should have accompanied it, which is a serious defect on any issue that will and should impact overheating or collapsing housing markets.

To be fair, EBA’s drafting problems derive in part from unclear or one sided drafting of the CRR itself, which focuses solely on the going up variety, and ignores cross-sector and insider-information type concerns. Perhaps the attention of prudential supervisors and housing market organisations could have been better asked for and used at the time of drafting of the related CRR provision, which now contains pitfalls (what is the impact on the bank’s profitability, on their market share compared to other providers, why is there only a level playing field between banks on a specific approach, and not between banks on different approaches, and would a gradual build up and decrease not be better than the sharp cliffs now envisaged, and why do the increases not impact immediately on new mortgage loans, alongside a gradual build up for the existing mortgage loan portfolio?). And what should be the impact on the interest rates agreed in the existing loan portfolio, and is this a public policy concern (which it might well be if it impacts on the financial health of house owners), or is it an issue that can be left to banks (by introducing an additional component into their contractual interest rate calculation and adaptation).

In short, even within the boundaries of the sketchy provisions in the CRR, the consultation paper could be helpfully improved by filling in some of the blanks on adjusting these risk weight provisions both down and up, and on cross-sector cooperation as well as good communication. In an area as important as housing markets, leaving this to national discretion or to market participants may not be the best course. In addition, the related CRR provisions might be adjusted to improve their effectiveness.

Also see:

• The separate comment on timing these supervisory interventions
• Art. 124-126 CRR
• Art. 128.2 sub d CRR
• Art. 164-166 CRR
• EBA consultation paper EBA/CP/2015/12 of 6 July 2015 on determining higher risk-weights,
• EBA overview of notifications on 124 and on 164 CRR
• EBA Q&A 2014-1214
• EU Banking Supervision, chapter 6.2, 8, and 16.6.

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