On 8 October 2024, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) published Consultation Paper 12/24 ‘Resolution assessments: Amendments to reporting and disclosure dates’ (CP12/24).

Existing rules

The existing PRA rules provide that each firm to which the Resolution Assessment Part of the PRA Rulebook applies is required to carry out an assessment of its preparations for resolution and submit a report to the PRA every two years, by the first Friday in October. Each firm must then publish a summary of its report by the second Friday in June of the following year. Separately, the Bank of England carries out an assessment of these firms’ preparations for resolution and makes a public statement on each firm’s resolvability at the same time as the firms publish their disclosures.

Proposals

In CP12/24 the PRA sets out proposals to amend the Resolution Assessment Part of the PRA Rulebook and Supervisory Statement 4/19 (SS4/19). The proposals relate to amendments to reporting and disclosure dates, but not other aspects of the resolution assessment. The intention is to provide greater flexibility over the timing of the reporting and disclosure requirements, while ensuring that firms periodically continue to report and disclose their assessments of their preparations for resolution.

More specifically, the proposals include:

  • The removal of the prescribed dates currently set out in Resolution Assessment 3.1 and 4.1, to give more flexibility to the timing of future reporting and disclosures.
  • That the PRA set out in SS4/19 that a firm would be expected to continue to report and disclose a summary of its assessment periodically, as communicated by the PRA, and no more frequently than every two years.
  • The PRA will communicate on its website its expectations as to the dates for future resolution assessment reports and disclosures at least 12 months in advance of the expected submission and publication dates.
  • Consequential amendments to SS4/19, including updates to the sections on waivers and modifications and transitional arrangements to reflect the removal of prescribed reporting and disclosure dates from the Resolution Assessment Part. The proposal does not change the current SS4/19 content about a firm that may seek to alter its own reporting or disclosure date in light of circumstances such as mergers or acquisitions.

Next steps

The deadline for comments on CP12/24 is 8 November 2024.

The PRA has opted for a one-month consultation period in order to provide firms with certainty on the timing of the next resolution assessment.

Subject to the outcome of the consultation, the PRA intends to communicate to firms that the third assessment will take place in 2026-27. This means that firms would be due to submit their reports in October 2026 and publish disclosures in June 2027.