Output Floors

Adrian Pop () and Diana Pop ()
Additional contact information
Adrian Pop: LEMNA - Laboratoire d'économie et de management de Nantes Atlantique - Nantes Univ - IAE Nantes - Nantes Université - Institut d'Administration des Entreprises - Nantes - Nantes Université - pôle Sociétés - Nantes Univ - Nantes Université
Diana Pop: GRANEM - Groupe de Recherche Angevin en Economie et Management - UA - Université d'Angers - Institut Agro Rennes Angers - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: We examine various implementation issues and challenges related to the calibration of output floors in setting minimum bank capital requirements under the finalized version of the Basel III capital accord. In our view, the main raison d'être of output floors is to limit the capital savings enjoyed by large banks due to regulatory arbitrage under the internal model paradigm. We consider regulatory arbitrage through the bank's incentive to optimize its grading system in order to lower as much as possible the capital requirement given the structure of its asset portfolio in terms of internal ratings and default probabilities. Based on a fictional portfolio of French SMEs observed over a full business cycle, we conduct a counterfactual analysis in order to compare the effect of the output floor implemented with respect to various benchmarks: a Basel I-style benchmark and two versions of the revised standardized approach. Our results show that a more risk-sensitive benchmark is likely to reduce the effect of the output floor on the "extra" RWA and, in fine, on the minimum capital requirement. Otherwise stated, the lower the gap between the internally-derived RWA, subject to regulatory capital arbitrage, and its standardized approach yardstick, the higher the probability that the output floor mechanism becomes less binding or even irrelevant.

Keywords: Output Floors Adrian POP University of Nantes (LEMNA); Institute of Banking & Finance; Chemin de la Censive du Tertre BP 52231; 44322 Nantes Cedex 3; France Tel.: +33-2-40-14-16-54; fax: +33-2-40-14-16-50. E-mail address: adrian.pop@univ-nantes.fr (Corresponding author) Diana POP University of Angers (GRANEM) 13 Allée François Mitterrand BP 13633; 49036 Angers Cedex 01; France Tel.: +33-2-41-96-21-24; fax: +33-2-41-96-21-96. E-mail address: diana.pop@univ-angers.fr 22/02/2022 Abstract: We examine various implementation issues and challenges related to the calibration of output floors in setting minimum bank capital requirements under the finalized version of the Basel III capital accord. In our view; the main raison d’être of output floors is to limit the capital savings enjoyed by large banks due to regulatory arbitrage under the internal model paradigm. We consider regulatory arbitrage through the bank’s incentive to optimize its grading system in order to lower as much as possible the capital requirement given the structure of its asset portfolio in terms of internal ratings and default probabilities. Based on a fictional portfolio of French SMEs observed over a full business cycle; we conduct a counterfactual analysis in order to compare the effect of the output floor implemented with respect to various benchmarks: a Basel I-style benchmark and two versions of the revised standardized approach. Our results show that a more risk-sensitive benchmark is likely to reduce the effect of the output floor on the “extra” RWA and; in fine; on the minimum capital requirement. Otherwise stated; the lower the gap between the internally-derived RWA; subject to regulatory capital arbitrage; and its standardized approach yardstick; the higher the probability that the output floor mechanism becomes less binding or even irrelevant. Keywords: regulatory arbitrage; risk weighted assets; output floor; solvency regulations; Basel capital accords; internal rating systems; standardized approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-06-23
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in 38th Symposium in Money Banking and Finance, Jun 2022, Strasbourg, France

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03692238

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().