In July 2016 the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision published an updated standard for the regulatory capital treatment of securitisation exposures that includes the regulatory capital treatment for “simple, transparent and comparable” (STC) securitisations. This standard amends the Committee’s 2014 capital standards for securitisations.
The capital treatment for STC securitisations builds on the 2015 STC criteria published by the Basel Committee and the International Organization of Securities Commissions. The standard published today sets out additional criteria for differentiating the capital treatment of STC securitisations from that of other securitisation transactions. The additional criteria, for example, exclude transactions in which the standardised risk weights for the underlying assets exceed certain levels. This ensures that securitisations with higher-risk underlying exposures do not qualify for the same capital treatment as STC-compliant transactions.
Compliance with the expanded set of STC criteria should provide additional confidence in the performance of the transactions, and thereby warrants a modest reduction in minimum capital requirements for STC securitisations. The Committee consulted in November 2015 on a proposed treatment of STC securitisations. Compared to the consultative version, the final standard has scaled down the risk weights for STC securitisation exposures, and has reduced the risk weight floor for senior exposures from 15% to 10%.
The Basel Committee wishes to thank all those who contributed time and effort to express their views during the consultation process.
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