Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, recently delivered a speech before the Hearing at the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament, Frankfurt am Main. In her confirmatory hearing before this Committee back in September 2019, she set out a goal: to ensure that the ECB engaged in a reflection on whether its monetary policy framework was sufficiently robust to meet future challenges. With the successful conclusion of its strategy review in July, she believes that they have achieved that goal. The review took the ECB’s mandate and primary objective of price stability, which is conferred by the Treaty, as a given. Continue reading…

Banco di Caribe NV (“Banco di Caribe”) has been sold to United Group Holdings BV (“United”). The sale includes all banking activities of Banco di Caribe in Curaçao, Aruba, Bonaire and Sint Maarten as well as the insurance and investment activities of Van der Lubbe Assurantiën NV, Bancarib Real Insurance Curaçao NV and BdC Investments BV. The sale agreement was signed on 11 September 2021, by seller Ennia Caribe Holding NV (“ECH”), represented by the Central Bank of Curaçao and Sint Maarten (“CBCS”) and buyer United. ECH is the parent company of the Ennia group. United is an established financial services provider active in Curaçao and six European countries, including financial centres such as Amsterdam, London and Luxembourg. Continue reading…

Noel Quinn, Group Chief Executive, HSBC, was the opening keynote speaker for Sibos 2021. Quinn, appointed Group Chief Executive in March 2020, has been with HSBC – or its constituent companies – since 1987. He has extensive breadth and depth of expertise, having previously led a number of business lines within the HSBC Group. Quinn also brings a truly global perspective to Sibos, with experience spanning Asia, the US and Europe. Continue reading…

On September 29, the Basel Committee published the results of its latest Basel III monitoring exercise, based on 31 December 2020 data. The report sets out the impact of the Basel III framework including the December 2017 finalisation of the Basel III reforms and the January 2019 finalisation of the market risk framework. It includes a special feature on exemptions from the leverage ratio exposure measure due to Covid-19, and covers both Group 1 and 2 banks (see note to editors for definitions). The final Basel III minimum requirements will be implemented by 1 January 2023 and fully phased in by 1 January 2028. The average impact of the fully phased-in final Basel III framework on the Tier 1 minimum required capital (MRC) of Group 1 banks is +2.9%, compared to a 1.8% increase at end-December 2019. This higher impact for Group 1 banks and G-SIBs may be partially driven by the different treatment of some outlier banks. Continue reading…

Every day, 20% of all bank staff in the Netherlands is engaged in detecting financial crime. This is a direct consequence of the anti-money laundering and terrorist financing legislation introduced since 2001. Detection efforts are mostly manual and therefore very inefficient: 95% of all alerts generated by transaction monitoring systems are false positives. These are the findings of regulatory technology specialist Hyarchis in its new Regulatory Technology on the Rise report, published recently. Continue reading…

Throughout 2021, the Basel Committee has written newsletters about improving banks’ resilience to cyber threats, climate-related financial risk, how to develop global sustainability standards, and the impact of financial digitization on the banking system. The amount of external cyber threats and incidents, such as ransomware attacks, have made banks concerned, and poses major risks to their financial systems and the safety of individual banks. Continue reading…

On October 1st, ING announced the start of a share buyback programme under which it plans to repurchase ordinary shares of ING Groep, with a maximum total value of €1,744 million and for a number of shares not exceeding the authority granted by the general meeting of shareholders (10% of the issued shares). The share buyback programme will commence on 5 October 2021 and is expected to end no later than 5 May 2022. The purpose of the share buyback programme is to reduce the share capital of ING. Continue reading…

The FSB recently published its new Financial Stability Surveillance Framework. The framework supports the comprehensive, methodical and disciplined review of vulnerabilities by the FSB, and thereby helps to identify and address new and emerging risks to financial stability. The framework embodies four key principles: focus on vulnerabilities that may have implications for global financial stability; scan vulnerabilities systematically and with a forward-looking perspective, while preserving flexibility; recognise differences among countries; and leverage the comparative advantages of the FSB while avoiding duplication of work. Continue reading…