On 14 October 2021, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) published Policy Statement 22/21 ‘Implementation of Basel standards: Final rules’ (PS22/21).
In Policy Statement 17/21 ‘Implementation of the Basel Standards’ (PS17/21), the PRA set out its feedback to responses and the resulting near-final policy following Consultation Paper 5/21 ‘Implementation of Basel standards’ which was published in February 2021.
The Financial Services Act 2021 (FS Act) empowers HM Treasury to revoke provisions in the onshored Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR), in order to allow the PRA to introduce updated prudential rules for credit institutions and PRA-designated investment firms. The Capital Requirements Regulation (Amendment) Regulations 2021 dealt with the exercise of the aforementioned revocations power and the PRA has now replaced these with the PRA rules set out in PS22/21.
In PS22/21 the PRA reports that while the policy in PS17/21 has not changed it has made minor amendments and corrections to the rules published as near final to:
- Remove and delete specific cross-references and rules following HM Treasury’s decision to revoke certain onshored CRR articles.
- Remove the definition of ‘Capital Requirement Regulation (CRR) consolidation entity’, as the PRA has now published the final definition and associated rules in Policy Statement 20/21 ‘Financial holding companies: Further implementation’.
- Make minor typographical amendments and factual corrections.
On 8 October 2021, the PRA published Policy Statement 21/21 ‘The UK leverage ratio framework’ (PS21/21). In PS21/21 the PRA updated the following items that were published as near-final in PS17/21:
- Annex I: Disclosure of key metric and overview of risk weight exposure amounts.
- Annex II: Instructions for disclosure of key metric and overview of risk weighted exposure amounts.
The versions of these items that were published alongside PS21/21, rather than those published alongside PS22/21, are the versions that will come into effect in respect of these policies on 1 January 2022.
PS21/21 also introduced amendments to Supervisory Statement 34/15 ‘Guidelines for completing regulatory reports’. These amendments have been incorporated into the version published as final as part of PS22/21.
All other templates, instructions, Supervisory Statements and Statements of Policy included in PS22/21 remain unchanged as compared to the near-final versions, and will take effect alongside the rules on 1 January 2022.
The PRA will update the online version of the PRA Rulebook later in 2021 to reflect changes made by PS21/21 and PS22/21. The PRA expects a delay of a few weeks after PS22/21 while that update is being carried out.
