In all the excitement going on about the US implementation and several other matters (like work) I have not been saying much about how the Australian banks are going on their applications for “Advanced” accreditation.
Just out of interest, I did a search for Basel II on each of the Bank’s websites earlier this week. Hit stats went something like:
Majors:
ANZ – 36
Commbank – 4 (2 identical documents in two places)
National – 1 (an employee profile only)
Westpac – 1.
Very poor outcome – but try the same using Google site search and the results change a bit:
ANZ – 26 (a drop?)
Commbank – 21
National – 1 (the same)
Westpac – 52.
Others:
BankWest (HBOSA)- 0 (I cannot find a search facility. Odd)
Macquarie – 29 (but many repeats)
St. George – 8 (again, a few repeats)
Google:
BankWest (HBOSA)- 0 (looks like the search facility would not have helped)
Macquarie – 13 (no repeats this time)
St. George – 3 (again, no repeats)
Additionally, not many of the documents are recent. This is, I suspect, for a good reason – several of them will not be ready on time or have been otherwise failed by APRA.
Under the prudential standards, this leaves them in an interesting place – the existing prudential standards will be withdrawn on 1 January and the Basel II ones will come in – but the banks that APRA have “delayed” accreditation for will not have done Standarised projects, and so will not be able to go to either system.
In practice, as Bernie Egan (APRA Basel II program director) made plain, these guys will stay on Basel I until they are cleared.
The big question is – who has already been cleared? Maybe those making the most noise about it?
3 comments
4 December, 2007 at 12:29
Martin Davies
Don’t be so sure.
There were those that made incredible noise about this a year or so ago and they were knocked back for not having proper policy around the tracking of loss data, a fundamental piece I believe.
Of course this is all interesting stuff, but one has to question the validity on this approach for what is published on the internet is more likely to be ramblings, marketing hype and studies from internal risk analysts where the last of which might be the most valuable of reads.
4 December, 2007 at 15:14
Andrew
Martin,
I have a fair idea about who has, and has not, been cleared – the public will not know for sure until the 31 March disclosures are made, though.
If anyone wants to post some scuttlebutt in further comments, though, I am happy to take them.
10 December, 2007 at 16:17
Andrew
Seems to be a fair amount of traffic through here today. Check out the latest news