Minimum standards for the supervision of international banking groups and their cross-border establishments

Introduction

In 1975, the Basel Committee obtained the agreement of the G10 Governors to a paper setting out principles for the supervision of banks' foreign establishments. These arrangements, revised in 1983 and now better known as the Concordat, took the form of recommended guidelines for best practice, and members of the Committee undertook to work towards their implementation according to the means available to them. Subsequently, in April 1990, certain practical aspects of these principles were elaborated in a Supplement to the Concordat.

Following recent developments, the Committee has reviewed the arrangements for coordination of the supervision of international banking. While the principles of the Concordat and its supplement are still viewed as being sound, members of the Committee now recognise that there needs to be a greater effort to ensure that these principles can be applied in practice. Accordingly certain of these principles have been reformulated as minimum standards, set out below, which G10 supervisory authorities expect each other to observe.