Basel III: Finalising post-crisis reforms

December 2017

The Basel III framework is a central element of the Basel Committee's response to the global financial crisis. It addresses shortcomings of the pre-crisis regulatory framework and provides a regulatory foundation for a resilient banking system that supports the real economy.
A key objective of the revisions incorporated into the framework is to reduce excessive variability of risk-weighted assets (RWA). At the peak of the global financial crisis, a wide range of stakeholders lost faith in banks' reported risk-weighted capital ratios. The Committee's own empirical analyses also highlighted a worrying degree of variability in banks' calculation of RWA. The revisions to the regulatory framework will help restore credibility in the calculation of RWA by:

• enhancing the robustness and risk sensitivity of the standardised approaches for credit risk and operational risk, which will facilitate the comparability of banks' capital ratios
• constraining the use of internally modelled approaches
• complementing the risk-weighted capital ratio with a finalised leverage ratio and a revised and robust capital floor

An accompanying document summarises the main features of these revisions.
For more information on the Basel III reforms, see the Basel III webpage.