On 4 June 2025, The Capital Buffers and Macro-prudential Measures Regulations 2025 were made together with an explanatory memorandum.

These Regulations come into force on 31 July 2025. They re-state relevant provisions of the Capital Requirements (Capital Buffers and Macro-prudential Measures) Regulations 2014 (the 2014 Regulations) on 31 July 2025. The 2014 Regulations are revoked by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 with effect from 31 July 2025. The restatement includes technical modifications to improve the effectiveness of the overall capital buffer framework.

Technical modifications include:

• Changing the review frequency of the Countercyclical Capital Buffer (CCyB) so that it is set “at least on a quarterly basis” rather than “on a quarterly basis”, to enable the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) to set the CCyB off-cycle, if needed (e.g., in response to a severe stress in the financial system).
• Removing the requirement for the FPC to publish a quarterly ‘buffer guide’ for the CCyB based on credit-to-GDP ratio, which should inform the setting of the CCyB rate. This is not currently used as the FPC’s judgement is that other measures of the macroeconomic risk environment are more pertinent to the CCyB rate setting.
• Updating the threshold at which firms are subject to the Other Systemically Important Institution (O-SII) buffer to match the Smarter Ring-Fencing Regime deposit threshold, to preserve the original policy intent of the buffer.
• Removing “edge case” provisions that cap the maximum combined buffer for firms that are subject to both an O-SII and Global Systemically Important Institutions buffer for simplification. These provisions have never been used and are very unlikely to ever be needed.