UK Authorities Issue Regulatory and Reporting Updates for Banks

Below are the key highlights of these recent updates:

• In July 2020, in light of the COVID outbreak, PRA announced a temporary increase of the PRA buffer for all firms that received a Pillar 2A reduction under the policy statement (PS15/20) on reconciling capital requirements and macro-prudential buffers. PRA has decided to remove the PRA buffer adjustment measure with effect from the end of December 2022, as uncertainty related to the COVID-19 outbreak has receded. Supervisors will be in contact with firms either through their Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP) where that is planned in 2022, or separately to communicate the firms’ updated PRA buffers. Where the adjustment is immaterial, the change may be aligned with the next SREP to simplify the communications.
• In its Statistical Notice 2022/12, BoE notified that the hotfix v1.2.3 of the Bank of England Statistics taxonomy has now been deployed to the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) environment. The UAT window will remain open until July 01, 2022. In the same notice, BoE also specified that all Statistical contacts have now been loaded to Bank of England Electronic Data Submission (BEEDS) Live Portal. The accounts created were based on the information provided in the key survey. The contact details held in BEEDS will be used for sending data validation and plausibility queries going forward so it is essential that firms maintain their user details in BEEDS. Returns for end of June will be available after July 01, 2022. OSCA accounts remain available but BoE encourages firms to migrate to BEEDS as soon as possible and to make use of testing windows prior to their BEEDS migration. The statistical notice further mentions that BoE recently completed an internal review about discontinuing the Bank Exposures data collection. Following evaluation of the costs and benefits of the collection, reporters are no longer required to report the Bank Exposures data, after the first quarter of 2022 reference period, with the last collection on May 20, 2022.
• The document on response to the consultation on amendments to Money Laundering Regulations summarizes the feedback received and sets out the findings and the decisions the government has taken as a result. The consultation outlined how the government intended to amend the UK’s Money Laundering Regulations to make several time-sensitive updates. The amendments are related to changes in scope to reflect the latest risk assessments and supervision-related changes, These updates are required to ensure that the UK continues to meet international standards, while strengthening and ensuring clarity on how the UK’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) regime operates. The consultation closed on October 14, 2021, with HMT receiving 94 responses from a wide range of respondents. Many of these changes will be implemented through the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) (No.2) Regulations 2022 Statutory Instrument. Most of the measures in the Statutory Instrument will come into force on September 01, 2022, subject to the Parliamentary approval. Sector-specific industry guidance will be updated to reflect the amended legislation.

Related Links

• PRA Statement on Buffer Adjustment
• BoE Statistical Notice 2022/12
• HMT Notification
• Response to Proposal on ML Regulations (PDF)

Keywords: Europe, UK, Banking, Regulatory Capital, Covid-19, SREP, Basel, Reporting, BEEDS, Statistical Reporting, Statistical Notice, Taxonomy, AML CFT, PRA, Pillar2A, BoE, HMT