FDIC Director McKernan suggests phasing ‘underdeveloped’ parts of Basel III

Bank Regulatory FDIC Basel Bank Supervision Basel Committee

On December 12, a member of the FDIC Board of Directors, Jonathan McKernan, expressed concerns about its Endgame proposal’s reliance on Basel Committee decisions. In his speech at a conference on trading book capital, he highlighted the lack of explanation behind design choices, leaving banking regulators unable to justify or comprehend certain reform aspects. The board member added that the absence of rationale hindered public feedback and raised doubts about the reform’s legitimacy.

McKernan suggested an approach to defer less developed areas of the reforms while implementing uncontested aspects—acknowledging the proposal’s goal to address weaknesses in the trading book framework and citing concerns about specific design decisions. McKernan notes certain design decisions like the profit-and-loss attribution test and non-modellable risk factors. McKernan explained that the PLA attribution test assesses the alignment between a bank’s risk management and front office models. McKernan said that for both designs, there is very little public information on the Basel Committee’s threshold formulation and that they are based on simulated data, which is viewed as a preliminary estimate still under development. Finally, McKernan supported enhancing the regulatory capital framework but stressed the need to validate the rationale behind key design decisions in the Basel reforms.