How to Address Solvency and Liquidity Risks? A Supervisory View

The financial crisis has revealed the necessary reform of the Basel II framework without challenging any of its core principles. More than ever, banks need to improve how they measure, manage and cover their risks. The new rules adopted within the framework of Basel III are structured along the following main lines: improving the quality and the level of the own funds, improving how risks related to market and securitization operations are covered, and implementing a framework to measure and manage liquidity risk. The Basel Committee also has decided to test leverage and has considered how to reduce the cyclicality of financial activities and the systemic risk.

The Basel III package represents a very substantial set of reforms to the prudential rules. The materialisation of the efforts made to define it will depend in part on the willingness of all countries to implement the reforms in a consistent fashion. It is therefore important that the frameworks for European and international supervisory cooperation ensure the consistency of both macro-prudential and micro-prudential supervision towards financial institutions and between countries, in order to construct the stable and sound financial system of the forthcoming years.