29 May 2019
The European Banking Authority (EBA) published today its 2018 Annual Report, which provides a detailed account of all the work the Authority achieved in the past year and anticipates the key areas of focus in the coming year.
In 2018, one of the EBA's priorities was to play a central role in the regulation and policy framework, with the development and maintenance of the Single Rulebook. In particular, the EBA increased its monitoring role on key parts of the prudential framework such as capital, liquidity, securitisation or models with the aim of strengthening supervisory convergence and the integrity of the single rulebook.
Another important part of the EBA's work focused on payments, namely on the delivery of technical standards and guidelines under PSD2 as well as on supervisory converge to ensure that the PSD2 requirements are applied in a sound, efficient and consistent manner across the EU.
In 2018, the EBA continued to work with EU authorities and institutions to fulfil the objectives of the Council action plan to tackle NPLs in Europe. To this end, the EBA published its revised NPL transaction templates as well as the guidelines on disclosure of non-performing and forborne exposures.
Throughout 2018, the EBA made great efforts to ensure good preparedness at all levels for the consequences of the UK's withdrawal, taking into account all possible outcomes, including the worst-case scenario.
Enhancing the transparency of the European banking sector through the disclosure of individual data on EU and EEA banks remained one of the key objectives of the EBA in 2018, which was achieved mainly through the publication of the annual EU-wide transparency exercise as well as the 2018 EU-wide stress test.
While the EBA has been working on financial innovation since its inception, its FinTech roadmap, published in March 2018, put in place a number of priorities for the next few years and launched the EBA FinTech Knowledge Hub.
In 2018, The EBA, together with European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) worked on developing a framework aimed at improving the effectiveness of anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) supervision across the EU and strengthening cooperation and information exchange between national supervisory authorities, both domestically and across borders. In particular, two technical standards and three guidelines came into force, which represent an important first step on the road towards a more consistent and effective European AML/CFT regime.
The Commission's Call for Advice on the impact and implementation of the revised Basel III framework aiming to finalise the post-crisis reforms and improving the balance between simplicity, comparability and risk sensitivity of capital requirements is another important task the EBA started to work on in 2018.
Finally, in December 2018, the EU legislators endorsed a package of measures aimed at reducing risks in the EU banking sector. The EBA issued several Opinions, which contributed to bringing transparency and evidence in support of the policy options on the table.
Related document:
2018 EBA Annual report