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Under the prudential standards, this leaves them in an interesting place – the existing prudential standards will be withdrawn on 1 January and the Basel II ones will come in – but the banks that APRA have “delayed” accreditation for will not have done Standarised projects, and so will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 n

oise about it?