The French Banking Federation (FBF), which represents 340 banks established in France—including 131 institutions with their seat outside of the country—has identified 10 strategic priorities for the next institutional cycle.
At the top of these priorities comes a regulatory break. It is necessary to “assess the impact on the financing of the economy” of the last ten years of strengthening the prudential framework at a European level, said Marie-Anne Barbat-Layani, Director General of the FBF on Thursday 16 May in Brussels, to a group of journalists.
This also applies to the risk reduction package, finalised at the end of 2018 (see EUROPE 12195/20). The EU, however, will have to examine the transposition of the Basel framework of late 2017, which would increase capital requirements by 21.3% for European banks, and even 28.4% for major banking groups, according to the FBF, which relies on figures provided by the European Banking Authority. The competitiveness of the sector vis-à-vis international key players is also at stake.
In the run-up to Brexit, French banks are calling for a new push for a “financing union” that would stimulate the development of capital markets in the EU. The FBF is proposing the creation of “reference asset classes in the euro area”; a relaxing of marketing conditions for the sale of certain financial products (e.g. MiFID2 directive) to encourage the financing of companies and the development of equity markets.
Money laundering. In terms of the fight against money laundering, Ms Barbat-Layani considered that, in the light of the scandal involving Danske Bank, the exchange of information between national supervisory bodies could be improved. Inter-bank exchanges could even be improved thanks to the digitisation of the sector and by taking account of confidentiality rules. Ms Barbat-Layani referred to ongoing work on data sharing related to ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) procedures.
Other priorities for the FBF are: - contributing to the response to societal challenges such as the fight against climate change and the protection of personal data in a dematerialised environment; - promoting the integrity of the financial system and the promotion of responsible lending.
Finally, the FBF is not opposed to the completion of a banking union in the euro area by implementing a deposit guarantee component based solely on a reinsurance mechanism.
This first stage of the European Commission's initial proposal seems to be “sufficient” to us, said Ms Barbat-Layani (see EUROPE 11437/1, 11436/1). She also considered to be “excessive” the proportion–more than 30% of the total—of French banks in contributions of the European banking sector to the Single Resolution Fund, the financial arm of the “resolution” section of the banking union.
More info can be found (in French) at: http://bit.ly/2VtOAVR (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)