Basel IV delayed by 1 year.

The Basel Committee has endorsed a set of measures recommending that the implementation of the Final Revisions to Basel III (aka Basel IV) published in 2017, be delayed by 1 year in order to provide banks with additional operational capacity to respond to the Coronavirus crisis.

Whereas the original Basel III focused on quality of balance sheet in order to ensure that no bank was again too big too fail, the focus of the Basel IV package is on consistency of RWA measurement/capture. It looks to achieve this by enhancing the standardised models and reducing the applicability/accessibility of the internal models, for each of the main risk areas. In so doing it frequently requires/will require that banks radically overhaul their risk measurement apparatus and processes.

The table below, supplied in the BIS press release, indicates the revised timeframes for each of the key areas.