Banca Naţională a României

Following the recommendation issued by the National Committee for Financial Stability on 26 November 2015, the National Bank of Romania decided to implement an O-SII buffer (the capital buffer for other systemically important institutions) on an individual, sub-consolidated or consolidated basis, as applicable, of 1 percent of the total risk exposure amount for all credit institutions identified as systemically important in 2015. The capital surcharge shall apply to banks, Romanian legal entities, starting 1 January 2016.

The National Bank of Romania regularly assesses credit institutions in terms of systemic importance, in compliance with the provisions of the Guidelines on the criteria to determine the conditions of application of Article 131(3) of Directive 2013/36/EU (CRD) in relation to the assessment of other systemically important institutions (O-SIIs) published by the European Banking Authority (EBA). Based on the flexibility provided for in the EBA Guidelines, whereby relevant authorities may raise/lower the 350 basis points threshold by 75 basis points (Article 9 of the Guidelines) to take into account the specificities of each Member State’s banking sector, the NBR set a threshold of 275 basis points for the automatic designation of systemically important institutions. The use of the 275 basis points threshold: a) leads to greater homogeneity of the group of identified O-SIIs, given the very small difference between the score of the last bank included in the group of systemic institutions and the first bank excluded from this category when using the 350 basis points standard threshold; b) eliminates the situation where banks determined as systemic in line with the additional indicators used by the NBR to capture the specificities of the domestic banking system might not be designated as systemic in the first step of the assessment (i.e. calculating the mandatory indicators), as a result of the threshold being too high.

The provisions regarding the O-SII buffer were implemented in Romania through NBR Regulation No. 5/2013 on prudential requirements for credit institutions.

The systemically important banks identified based on available data at the end of 2015 Q2 and the scores obtained following the calculation of EBA-recommended mandatory indicators are as follows: Banca Comercială Română S.A. (1,801 bps), BRD - Groupe Société Générale S.A. (1,430 bps), UniCredit Bank S.A. (1,075 bps), Raiffeisen Bank S.A. (963 bps), Banca Transilvania S.A. (937 bps), Alpha Bank Romania S.A. (473 bps), Garanti Bank S.A. (405 bps), CEC Bank S.A. (359 bps), Bancpost S.A. (328 bps). The key methodological elements underlying the assessment are included in the presentation “Identificarea băncilor de importanță sistemică din România” (“Identifying systemically important banks in Romania”) delivered by Mr Liviu Voinea, Deputy Governor of the NBR, available in Romanian only.

Pursuant to the recommendations of the National Committee for Financial Stability, the following requirements on capital buffers shall apply starting 1 January 2016: (i) a capital conservation buffer of 0.625 percent of the total risk exposure amount for all credit institutions, Romanian legal entities, (ii) a countercyclical capital buffer of 0 percent, and (iii) an O-SII buffer of 1 percent of the total risk exposure amount for all credit institutions identified as systemically important in 2015. The table below shows the cumulatative capital requirements applicable as of 1 January 2016 to banks, Romanian legal entities.