Basel III: the implementation imperative

Keynote address by Pablo Hernández de Cos, Chair of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and Governor of the Bank of Spain, at the 15th BCBS-FSI High-level Meeting for Africa on Strengthening financial sector supervision and current regulatory priorities, Cape Town, 30 January 2020.

BCBS speech  | 
30 January 2020

Good morning, and welcome to the 15th BCBS-FSI High-level Meeting for Africa. Let me start by thanking Governor Kganyago and the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) for hosting this meeting in Cape Town.

As the global standard setter for banks, the Basel Committee places great importance on reaching out to a wide range of stakeholders to inform its work. Events such as these high-level meetings are of particular value to the Committee in seeking the views of central banks and supervisory authorities across different regions of the world.

With a population of over 1.2 billion and a median age of 19 years, Africa will play an increasingly important role in shaping the future world economy. The average annual GDP growth in Africa has exceeded the global average over the past several years, and six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies hail from this continent.

My remarks today will focus primarily on the imperative of implementing the Basel Committee's post-crisis reforms. I'm pleased to note that the SARB takes this imperative seriously: it has a strong track record of implementing the Basel III standards in a timely and consistent manner. And Governor Kganyago's chairmanship of the Financial Stability Board's Standing Committee on Standards Implementation underscores the SARB's commitment to this imperative.

I will frame my remarks around four questions:

  1. Why does implementation matter?
  2. What has the Basel Committee done to meet the implementation imperative?
  3. What have we seen to date among our members?
  4. Where does this leave us?