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International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department
This paper focuses on the technical note on regulation and supervision of less significant institutions in Belgium. The financial sector assessment program (FSAP) undertook a targeted review of Belgium’s Less Significant Institutions (LSI) and third-country branches (TCBs) banking regulation and supervision. The National Bank of Belgium (NBB) and Financial Services and Markets Authority have well-established processes for prudential, product and conduct supervision of LSIs. While NBB’s overall supervisory approach is adequate, the regulatory framework for corporate governance could be enhanced. Internal decision-making processes and the underpinning of certain decision proposal could in some specific instances be enhanced. With regard to NBB’s internal supervisory processes, some fine-tuning and continued attention could be useful. The NBB should continue to ensure adequate staffing for LSI and TCB supervision and continue to carefully consider how to address any supervisory Information Technology risk concerns. Banks’ internal capital target could usefully be added to the NBB’s internal monitoring. A structured approach for conduct risk and consumer protection information sharing with the FSMA and the Ministry of Economic Affairs should be put in place.
International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department
This paper focuses on the report on Belgium’s Financial Sector Assessment Program. Economic activity has slowed, core inflation remains high, and the fiscal outlook is challenging. The financial sector has remained resilient despite a series of shocks. Key financial stability risks emanate from the large, concentrated, and interconnected banking sector, private sector indebtedness, and high exposure to real estate. Bank solvency stress tests indicate that the financial sector is resilient under severe macroeconomic shocks. Although there is some heterogeneity across financial institutions, all banks would satisfy the minimum capital criteria. The authorities should enhance the National Bank of Belgium’s powers to set macroprudential policy in line with its financial stability mandate. In the near term, the extension/ setting of capital requirements should be streamlined, without the requirement for government approval. There is scope to strengthen the corporate governance framework and expectations for banks, and boost prudential supervisory staffing, especially given upcoming regulatory developments.
International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department
The Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) conducted a focused review of insurance regulation and supervision in Belgium. This technical note (TN) provides an update on the insurance sector and highlights risks and vulnerabilities. It analyzes key aspects of regulatory and supervisory oversight: supervisor; the solvency framework; supervision (micro and macro); changes in control and portfolio transfer, reinsurance; conduct of business and group supervision and supervisory co-operation and co-ordination. Belgium has adopted a twin peaks model of regulatory oversight and supervision. The National Bank of Belgium (NBB) is responsible for prudential supervision at both a micro and macro level whilst the Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) is mandated with conduct of business supervision. The analysis focuses on supervision within the scope of the NBB’s and the FSMA’s mandates. The TN comments on progress in respect of the implementation of recommendations made by the previous FSAP and offers further recommendations to strengthen the regulatory and supervisory regime.
Mr. Marc G Quintyn, Ms. Rosaria Vega Pansini, and Donato Masciandaro
The Asian financial crisis marked the beginning of worldwide efforts to improve the effectiveness of financial supervision. However, the crisis that started in 2007?08 was a crude awakening: several of these improvements seemed unable to avoid or mitigate the crisis. This paper brings the first systematic analysis of the role of two of these efforts - modifications in the architecture of financial supervision and in supervisory governance - and concludes that they were negatively correlated with economic resilience. Using the emerging distinction between macro- and micro-prudential supervision, we explore to what extent two separate institutions would allow for more checks and balances to improve supervisory governance and, thus, reduce the probability of supervisory failure.
Mr. Juan Sole and Marco A Espinosa-Vega
Effective cross-border financial surveillance requires the monitoring of direct and indirect systemic linkages. This paper illustrates how network analysis could make a significant contribution in this regard by simulating different credit and funding shocks to the banking systems of a number of selected countries. After that, we show that the inclusion of risk transfers could modify the risk profile of entire financial systems, and thus an enriched simulation algorithm able to account for risk transfers is proposed. Finally, we discuss how some of the limitations of our simulations are a reflection of existing information and data gaps, and thus view these shortcomings as a call to improve the collection and analysis of data on cross-border financial exposures.
Mr. Martin Cihak and Alexander F. Tieman
The paper analyzes the quality of financial sector regulation and supervision around the globe. Unlike studies that collect and analyze data on regulation and supervision "on the books," this study also analyzes available information on supervisory implementation, making use of data from IMF-World Bank assessments of compliance with international standards and codes. Incorporating supervisory implementation into the study provides an improved means of assessing countries' regulatory systems. We find that countries' regulatory frameworks score on average one notch below full compliance with the standards (on a 4-notch scale). There are substantial differences in the quality of regulatory and supervisory frameworks across countries, with the income level being a major factor.