The application of rules on banks and the calculation of their liquidity buffers need to be revised following the recent turmoil in the banking sector, said Klaas Knot, Chair of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) of the G20, on Thursday. The consequences of the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank, a U.S. bank that was not considered “systemically important” by U.S. regulators and therefore had to comply with stricter liquidity rules, were felt in Europe. In Switzerland, the government forced the takeover of the troubled Credit Suisse by UBS instead of closing the bank using the “resolution” tools introduced by regulators after the global financial crisis of 2008. Knot, who also heads De Nederlandsche Bank, said that the FSB has initiated an evaluation of how the U.S. and Swiss authorities responded to these events. Regulators need to reconsider which type of banks are considered systemically important and therefore fall under the global capital standards of Basel III, Knot said. “It’s not a European issue, but it is an issue in other parts of the world.” Knot said at an event of the European Banking Federation. “The supervision on our side has clearly withstood better than on the other side of the Atlantic.” It was also time to review the liquidity coverage ratio, a buffer of cash and other liquid instruments that banks must hold to absorb short-term funding, Knot added.
