Basel III: Finalising post-crisis reforms

Basel III: Finalising post-crisis reforms, sometimes called the Basel III Endgame, Basel 3.1 or CRR3, are changes to international standards for bank capital requirements that were agreed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) in 2017 and are due for implementation in January 2023. They amend the international banking standards known as the Basel Accords.^[1]

The Basel Committee describes these changes as completing the Basel III reforms, published in 2010–11,^[2] and calls them "finalised Basel III post-crisis reforms".^[3] These remaining reforms to prudential regulation of banks are known by various names in BCBS member jurisdictions (often including other Basel III reforms that remain to be implemented – in particular, FRTB). In the US, implementation of these reforms is the main part of what is being called the Basel III "Endgame".^[4][5] The UK calls the changes "Basel 3.1".^[6] In the European Union, it is typically known as CRR3.^[7] Others have referred to them as Basel IV; however, the secretary general of Basel Committee said in a 2016 speech he did not view the changes as substantial enough to describe them in such a way.^[8]

Critics of the reforms, in particular those from the banking industry, argue that the standards lead to a significant increase in capital requirements, when the stated intention of the Basel Committee was for the changes to the standards to be capital neutral in terms of their aggregate impact, although not necessarily neutral for individual banks.^[1]