The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision today released a consultative document proposing a set of changes to the Basel III framework’s approaches for determining Banks' regulatory capital requirements for credit risk.  The goals of these changes are to (i) reduce the complexity of the regulatory framework and improve comparability; and (ii) address excessive variability in the capital requirements for credit risk.

For many years, banks have provided borrower default indemnification as part of their securities lending services, which has given beneficial owners additional assurance as to the safety of their lending programs, and has allowed pension funds and others for whom such indemnity is legally required to participate in the securities lending market as well.  Up until now, banks offering this kind of guarantee have not been required to reserve capital for the associated contingency, and indemnification costs have typically been bundled into the overall fee for services agreed to by beneficial owners and their agents.  Lately, however, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) and others have questioned whether this kind of indemnification is a source of stress on the balance sheets of banks, and potentially a threat to financial stability. Also, banking and other regulators are exploring whether borrower default indemnification should be swept into new Basel III leverage ratios and reserve capital requirement, which could make indemnification unviable.