Banking supervisors and industry executives from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are to meet in Bahrain to discuss the implementation of new international bank capital rules.
The meeting on the Practical Application of Basel II Accord, on 13th & 14th April 2005, is jointly organized by the Financial Stability Institute (FSI) of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the GCC General Secretariat, with the support of the Bahrain Monetary Agency (BMA), Institute of International Finance and the Union of Arab Banks. It will be held at the Ritz Carlton Bahrain Hotel & Spa.
The Basel II Accord is also the focus of a regional seminar for banking supervisors, currently underway at the Bahrain Institute of Banking & Finance (BIBF). The seminar, from 10th to 12th April 2005, is organized by the FSI, the GCC General Secretariat’s Committee of Banking Supervisors, and the BMA.
“The BMA is pleased to host these two important events, which come at an opportune time when banking supervisors and the banking industry all over the world are preparing in earnest for the implementation beginning of 2007 for the new Basel II Accord,” said Mr. Ahmed Al Bassam, Director, Licensing & Policy, at the BMA.
The new Accord, which was hotly debated during its preparation, places much greater emphasis on risk management and will introduce more complex methodologies for measuring capital requirements, which will reflect more accurately the underlying risks that banking institutions are exposed to.
The BMA has been working with Bahrain’s banking industry to facilitate the implementation of the new international rules, which pose numerous implementation challenges for both banks and supervisory authorities, he pointed out.
The meeting of senior supervisory officials and industry executives will be attended by top FSI and BIS officials, including Mr. Josef Tosovsky, Chairman of the FSI, and Mr. Ryozo Himino, Secretary General, Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, at the BIS.
Discussions at the meeting will focus on such issues as preconditions, options and challenges in the implementation process; supervisory cooperation; Basel II and Islamic banking issues; corporate governance and capital adequacy measurements and standards for the Arab banking system; and impact of Basel II on banks and the banking industry.
The first day of the meeting will be a joint forum of representatives of the regulatory/supervisory agencies and the private sector, while the second day will be exclusively for the public sector officials.
The regional seminar at the BIBF focuses on credit risk and the issues related to sound principles for credit risk management; credit risk measurement and modeling; credit risk transfer and asset securitisation; the Basel II approach to measuring regulatory capital requirements for credit risk; and credit risk mitigation.
The regional seminar is being conducted by leading experts from FSI, led by Ms. Elizabeth Roberts, Director FSI and Mr. Moses Pelaelo, Senior Financial Sector Specialist.
