History of banking regulation as developed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision 1974-2014

Abstract

In its anniversary 40 years the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) has published 453 documents that have framed the general bank (and particularly risk) supervision and regulation worldwide. The objective of the paper is to investigate the main stages of BCBS regulation evolution, key facts related to bank and risk regulation development process and to summarize the areas that were touched by the BCBS regulation including credit, market, operational and liquidity risks; risk and capital aggregation; corporate governance, recommendations for central banks and information disclosure by commercial banks. The paper should be viewed as a natural continuation of the Professor Goodhart’s 2011 book on BCBS history with two core distinctive features. Whereas Professor Goodhart’s book focuses on the early history of 1974-1997 and is based on review of BCBS internal archives, the current paper covers whole history of 1974-2014 and is based on the documents and comments publicly available on the website of the Basel Committee. Concluding remarks present recommendations to improve existing bank and risk regulation to be first adopted by the Basel Committee.