Risk-based capital rule

The Federal Reserve Board's vice chairman for supervision said he did not foresee the agency’s regulatory review as significantly reducing capital levels.

The final plan to end "too big to fail" suggests that banks with less than $10 billion be subject to a much less complicated risk-based capital regime, akin to what was required in Basel I.

The House Financial Services Committee passed 13 bills (and scrapped a vote on one) Wednesday, including one that would stop Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from being released by the government and another hailed as helping the underbanked in rural areas.

Federal Reserve Gov. Jerome Powell said capital levels have been well calibrated but that some changes to the capital rules may be in order to make compliance easier.

Regulators disagree whether proposed changes to capital requirements would ease burden on community banks; JPMorgan on hook if jury award not overturned.

The proposal is aimed at a simpler capital regime particularly for community banks, but some industry representatives and regulators themselves questioned whether the plan went far enough.

EU-based banks are citing a U.S. Treasury Department report as reason to slow-walk international regulatory standards.

The reintroduction of a bill to "stop and study" NCUA's risk-based capital rule could reopen one of the credit union movement's biggest arguments in decades.

A perfect risk-based capital ratio obviously is preferable to an admittedly imperfect leverage ratio. The problem is there is no perfect risk-based measure.

The comment period on NCUA's notice of proposed rulemaking on alternative capital ended last week, and judging by the letters, another battle is brewing.