Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up to the UK banks myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
The Bank of England has lowered its estimate of how much capital British lenders need after the country’s biggest banks passed its latest “stress test” to gauge how they would cope in a crisis.
In its first review of UK bank capital requirements for six years, the BoE said it had lowered “the appropriate benchmark” for the level of tier one capital needed to absorb losses during a crisis from 14 to 13 per cent.
The decision by the BoE’s Financial Policy Committee, chaired by governor Andrew Bailey, means capital requirements will be lowered for UK banks for the first time since they were increased in response to the 2008 financial crisis.
The BoE also found UK capital requirements were high in some areas compared with the US and the EU, prompting it to announce a review of the leverage ratio that requires banks to have a set amount of capital relative to their total assets.
This is a developing story
www.ft.com
#BoE #lowers #capital #requirements #banks #pass #stress #tests
