Basel II

Basel II improved on Basel I, first enacted in the 1980s, by offering more complex models for calculating regulatory capital. Essentially, the accord mandates that banks holding riskier assets should be required to have more capital on hand than those maintaining safer portfolios. Basel II also requires companies to publish both the details of risky investments and risk management practices. The full title of the accord is Basel II: The International Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards - A Revised Framework.

The three essential requirements of Basel II are:

1. Mandating that capital allocations by institutional managers are more risk sensitive.
2. Separating credit risks from operational risks and quantifying both.
3. Reducing the scope or possibility of regulatory arbitrage by attempting to align the real or economic risk precisely with regulatory assessment.

Basel II has resulted in the evolution of a number of strategies to allow banks to make risky investments, such as the subprime mortgage market. Higher risks assets are moved to unregulated parts of holding companies. Alternatively, the risk can be transferred directly to investors by securitization, the process of taking a non-liquid asset or groups of assets and transforming them into a security that can be traded on open markets.

Read more about Basel II: - More information about the Basel II Accord is available at basel-ii-accord.com. - The Council of Mortgage Lenders provides a guide to Basel II. - The text of Basel II is available at the Web site of the Bank for International Settlements. - SearchFinancialSecurity.com offers selected resources related to financial services laws, regulations and compliance.

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