Photo: Thomas Jordan, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank

Policy-making under uncertainty : The importance of maintaining a medium-term orientation

05 December 2023
Knowledge Base

Thomas Jordan

I would especially like to thank our colleagues at the Bank for International Settlements and the Federal Reserve Board for working together with us in organising this event. The topic of this year’s conference – policy-making under uncertainty – is highly relevant. There is, for instance, substantial uncertainty regarding the impact of accumulated monetary tightening on future inflation. There is also high uncertainty about how the current geopolitical tensions will affect the global economy. Continue reading…

Photo: Janez Lenarčič,

Europe and Canada have agreed to enhancing ties in civil protection and disaster risk management

01 December 2023

During the EU-Canada Summit, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau endorsed an Administrative Arrangement allowing closer cooperation on disaster response and emergency management. The EU and Canada will also share best practices to enhance prevention, preparedness, and coordination on natural and human-induced disasters including in third countries. In addition, the European Commission will finance the purchase 12 new Canadian built planes (Canadair) to increase the aerial firefighting capacity of the EU Civil Protection Mechanism strategic reserve (‘rescEU’). EU Member States have also ordered a further 12 planes.
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Ajay Katara

Ajay Katara

Consulting Partner and Head the RegTech Portfolio in Banking Risk Management area at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

Gen AI Use Cases in Risk and Compliance

30 November 2023
Knowledge Base

Generative Artificial Intelligence or Gen AI as it is popularly called has recently emerged as a technology enabler which is seeing a lot of use cases across the banking industry. Currently, many banks are trying to experiment with this new tool and understand amendable areas that can benefit from this technological intervention. Adoption patterns currently indicate that many banks and financial institutions are starting small with internal use cases to understand and analyse the efficacy of this intervention. Within the banking sector, Gen AI has a lot of applications in the risk and compliance value chain across areas of Risk Identification, Risk Assessment, Risk Monitoring and Risk Reporting. As per industry estimates, market size is expected to grow at a CAGR of 34% (approx.) in risk and compliance management. Given the focus of regulatory scrutiny on the adoption of Gen AI in the risk and compliance function, currently the initial set of use cases are more focused on augmenting the existing functions rather than fully automating them, hence the adoption of Gen AI is slowly but steadily progressing. Integration of Gen AI with the existing RegTech tools can yield a lot of benefits in terms of improved automation and cost savings which will make the current processes more efficient and also enable near real time decision making as well in certain risk and compliance functions. Continue reading…

First European Hydrogen Bank auction with €800 million of subsidies for renewable hydrogen production

29 November 2023

The Commission launched the first auction under the European Hydrogen Bank to support the production of renewable hydrogen in Europe, with an initial €800 million of emissions trading revenues, channelled through the Innovation Fund. Producers of renewable hydrogen can bid for support in the form of a fixed premium per kilogram of hydrogen produced. The premium is intended to bridge the gap between the price of production and the price consumers are currently willing to pay, in a market where non-renewable hydrogen is still cheaper to produce. The Hydrogen Bank complements other policy tools to build a market for renewable hydrogen, stimulate investments in the production capacity, and bring production to scale. Renewable hydrogen has a critical role to play in Europe’s future energy mix, in particular for the decarbonisation of heavy industry and some transport sectors, replacing fossil fuels. By enabling a faster rollout of innovative hydrogen technologies the pilot auction will contribute to the REPowerEU Plan goal to produce 10 million tonnes of hydrogen domestically by 2030.
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The adoption of POR and PSMOR

28 November 2023
Knowledge Base

This article provides information on the Basel Committee’s assessment of the adoption of the Principles for Operational Resilience and the revised Principles for the Sound Management of Operational Risk. The Committee believes the information provided may be useful for both supervisors and banks in their day-to-day activities. This document is for informational purposes only and does not constitute new supervisory guidance or expectations. The Committee assessed the adoption of the Principles for Operational Resilience (POR) and the revised Principles for the Sound Management of Operational Risk (PSMOR, or collectively, “the Principles”) published in March 2021. The assessment is meant to promote the adequate and timely adoption of the Principles. The assessment found that the effectiveness and maturity of POR and PSMOR adoption vary across banks and jurisdictions. Continue reading…

Nancy Mehrad

Nancy Mehrad

Author and the CEO and Founder of Registrant Law Professional Corporation

Phase 1 of CIRO Dealer and Consolidated Rules Published for Comment

27 November 2023

On October 20, 2023, the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organisation (CIRO) published for comment Phase 1 of the CIRO rule consolidation project rule proposals. The CIRO rule consolidation project aims to bring together the two member regulations rule sets currently applicable to investment dealers (the IDPC rules) and mutual fund dealers (the MFD rules).  The consolidated member regulation rules will be known as the CIRO Dealer and Consolidated Rules. This is the first of five expected rule development and implementation phases.  Continue reading…

Photo: Tony Murphy

European Commission and European Court of Auditors: College to College meeting

23 November 2023

The Colleges of the European Commission and the European Court of Auditors met on November 13th in Brussels for the annual meeting between the two EU institutions. Both institutions reaffirmed their commitment to continuing their constructive cooperation as the EU’s executive and audit powers, while at the same time exploring ways to deepen their cooperation in full respect of their respective roles. The members of the Commission and the Court of Auditors discussed how the EU budget contributes to the achievement of the EU’s ambitious priorities.
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Leveraging Gen AI for Basel III End Game Compliance

21 November 2023
Knowledge Base

by Ajay Katara

Basel III end game is the latest update to the US Capital requirements which will bring about sweeping changes to the existing capital requirements in place for the US banks. Under the existing provisions there are two approaches which apply to US banks. The standardised approach applies to all banking organisations (other than community banks) and advanced approaches apply to category 1 and category 2 US banks, and they must also compute Risk Weighted Assets (RWA) under the standardised too. The US regulators have proposed July 2025 for compliance with new requirements with a three-year transition period ending in Jun 2028. The new regulation will bring about a lot of changes and will fundamentally apply to banks with asset sizes greater than USD 100 Mn with specific changes applying to banks designated between category 1 to category IV. Continue reading…

Deal on first-ever EU law to curb methane emissions in the EU and globally

20 November 2023

The Commission welcomes the provisional agreement between the European Parliament and Council on a new EU Regulation to reduce energy sector methane emissions in Europe and in our global supply chains. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas – the second biggest contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide (CO2) – and is also a potent air pollutant. Today’s agreement is therefore crucial to delivering the European Green Deal and reducing our net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030. It will oblige the fossil gas, oil and coal industry to properly measure, monitor, report and verify their methane emissions according to the highest monitoring standards, and take action to reduce them. The agreement comes just a few weeks ahead of COP28, where the EU will continue its engagement with international partners on reducing methane emissions. Continue reading…