Regulatory and Industry Approaches to Capital and Risk GAO/GGD-98-153
United States General Accounting Office Report to the Chairman, Committee on GAO Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U. S. Senate, and the Chairman, Committee on Banking and Financial Services, House of Representatives July 1998 RISK-BASED CAPITAL Regulatory and Industry Approaches to Capital and Risk GAO/GGD-98-153 United States General Accounting Office GAO Washington, D.C. 20548 General Government Division B-275428 July 20, 1998 The Honorable Alfonse M. D’Amato Chairman The Honorable Paul S. Sarbanes Ranking Minority Member Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs United States Senate The Honorable James A. Leach Chairman The Honorable John J. LaFalce Ranking Minority Member Committee on Banking and Financial Services House of Representatives Recent years have seen dynamic changes in the financial services industry. As firms have improved their internal measurement of risk, regulators have responded by reexamining their capital regulations. This report summarizes the results of our self-initiated review of regulatory capital requirements and financial firms’ approaches to relating capital to risk. Our review focused on regulatory views of the purpose of capital and current regulatory capital requirements, approaches to risk measurement and capital allocation used today by some of the largest financial firms, and regulatory risk-based capital initiatives. Risk-based capital, although already being used to some degree by regulators of banks, securities broker-dealers, futures commission merchants, and life insurers, is evolving as advances in financial theory and technology enable firms to better understand, measure, and manage their risk. We identify a number of issues concerning future regulatory risk-based capital initiatives of interest to regulators and financial firms.
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