Making Things Safer, Basel Committee Lowers the Leverage Ratio Rule

“World banking regulators said they would soften the terms of a rule meant to ensure banks’ soundness, bowing to pressure from banks that had argued it would stifle their lending to consumers and businesses.

The Basel Committee for Banking Supervision, made up of banking regulators from around the world, said it had revised the definition of its leverage ratio in ways that will allow banks to report lower levels of overall risk. The leverage ratio measures capital held by a bank against its total assets, so the changes will lead to higher reported capital ratios. That will reduce the pressure on banks to either shed assets or raise more capital to meet the requirement.

The biggest beneficiaries of the changes appear likely to be banks most involved in securities and derivatives markets. Most important, the rules no longer require banks to count 100% of their off-balance-sheet assets. That not only includes most of banks’ derivatives exposures, but also the guarantees and letters of credit that are essential to greasing the wheels of international trade.

In addition, the changes allow for extensive “netting” of securities-financing transactions, such as repurchase agreements, or “repos,” for greater counting of margin payments received from counterparties. And they let banks eliminate double-counting of exposures involving central counterparties. Those changes will have the effect of reducing assets reported under the leverage ratio, increasing banks’ reported ratios.

The announcement is the latest in a series of amendments to the aggressive new rules that regulators drew up in reaction to the 2008 financial crisis, in an effort to make the financial system safer. Much of that fine-tuning has had the effect of softening the impact of the new rules, as the industry has managed to persuade regulators that their plans were overzealous. Sunday’s announcement follows a similar relaxation of a new rule on minimum liquidity standards at the start of last year. It also follows a significant dilution in the U.S.’s so-called Volcker rule, which is an attempt at curbing speculative trading by banks, and signs from the European Union that it will soft-pedal parallel plans of its own.

Banks will have to report their leverage ratios from 2015 onward, and regulators intend to force them to have a ratio of at least 3% starting in 2018, but there is no binding commitment to the latter….”

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