On January 28, 2015, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision ("Basel Committee") issued its final standard for revised Pillar 3 disclosure requirements. The revised requirements aim to enhance the transparency of the approaches taken by banks in calculating their minimum regulatory capital requirements and allow market participants to access key information and compare banks' disclosures of risk-weighted assets. In aiming to improve the comparability and consistency of disclosures, new templates are introduced, and five guiding principles for disclosures have been agreed. The disclosures should be: (i) clear; (ii) comprehensive; (iii) meaningful to users; (iv) consistent over time; and (v) comparable across banks. The new requirements will supersede the existing Pillar 3 requirements from the end of 2016.

The final standards are available at: http://www.bis.org/bcbs/publ/d309.pdf.

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