Good practice principles for supervisory colleges revised

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has published a consultation paper on revised good practice principles for supervisory colleges. Supervisory Colleges are, effectively, working groups of supervisors of the parent company and key branches or subsidiaries of an international banking group which share information and coordinate supervisory activities related to implementation of Basel standards, especially for large internationally active banking groups.

The original good practice principles were first published in October 2010. This consultation paper updates the principles following a review of practical challenges in their implementation and possible areas of additional best practices. 

The key changes include the following:

• Principle 1 (college objectives) now places greater emphasis on collaboration and information- sharing on an ongoing basis;
• Principle 2 (college structures) provides greater clarity on the expectation to strike a balance between core college effectiveness and host involvement;
• Principle 3 (information sharing) includes the expectation that home and host supervisors will put in place appropriate mechanisms and sufficient resources for effective and timely information exchange;
• Principle 6 (interaction with the institution) encourages home and host supervisors to agree on the types of feedback provided to banks and ensure consistency in how such feedback is provided; and
• Principle 7 (crisis preparedness) differentiates between banks that have established crisis management groups (CMGs), for example, systemically important banks, and banks that do not have a CMG. For the former, guidance is provided on possible communication and coordination between the college and CMG on crisis preparedness.

Comments are requested by 18 April 2014.

Related link: 

http://www.bis.org/publ/bcbs276.pdf