The Basel Committee
 

The Basel Accords (see alternative spellings below) refer to the banking supervision Accords (recommendations on banking laws and regulations), Basel I and Basel II issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS). They are called the Basel Accords as the BCBS maintains its secretariat at the Bank of International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland and the committee normally meets there.

The Basel Committee consists of representatives from central banks and regulatory authorities of the Group of Ten countries, plus others (specifically Luxembourg and Spain). The committee does not have the authority to enforce recommendations, although most member countries (and others) tend to implement the Committee's policies. This means that recommendations are enforced through national (or EU-wide) laws and regulations, rather than as a result of the committee's recommendations - thus some time may pass between recommendations and implementation as law at the national level.

The Basel Committee is named after the city of Basel, Switzerland. In early publications, the Committee sometimes used the British spelling "Basle" or the French-language spelling "Bâle," names that are sometimes still used in the media. More recently, the Committee has deferred to the predominantly German-speaking population of the region and used the spelling "Basel."

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is an institution created by the central bank Governors of the Group of Ten nations . It was created in 1974 and meets regularly four times a year.

The Committee's members come from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The Committee usually meets at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland, where its 12 member permanent Secretariat is located. The Committee is often referred to as the BIS Committee after its meeting location. However, the BIS and the Basel Committee remain two distinct entities.[1]

The Basel Committee formulates broad supervisory standards and guidelines and recommends statements of best practice in banking supervision (see bank regulation or Basel II Accord, for example) in the expectation that member authorities and other nations' authorities will take steps to implement them through their own national systems, whether in statutory form or otherwise.

The purpose of the committee is to encourage convergence toward common approaches and standards. Dieter Kerwer reports that "the BCBS is not a classical multilateral organization. It has no founding treaty, and it does not issue binding regulation. Rather, its main function is to act as an informal forum to find policy solutions and to promulgate standards."

The present Chairman of the Committee is Nout Wellink, President of the Netherlands Bank,[3] who succeeded Jaime Caruana of the Bank of Spain on 1 July 2006.[4] Actually, the IMF is collaborating with the Committee to improve bank regulation.

The Basil committee along with its sister organizations, the International Organization of Securities Commissions and International Association of Insurance Supervisors together make up the Joint Forum of international financial regulators.

 

See also

Tier 1 capital

Tier 2 capital
Basel Committee Accords

List of SWIFT Codes Worldwide

List of correspondent Banks networks worldwide with SWIFT CODE