Risk-Based Capital Standards: Interest Rate Risk

The OCC, the Board, and the FDIC (collectively referred to as the banking agencies) are issuing this final rule to implement the portion of Section 305 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991 (FDICIA) that requires the banking agencies to revise their risk-based capital standards to ensure that those standards take adequate account of interest rate risk. This final rule amends the capital standards to specify that the banking agencies will include, in their evaluations of a bank's capital adequacy, an assessment of the exposure to declines in the economic value of the bank's capital due to changes in interest rates. Concurrent with the publication of this final rule, the banking agencies are issuing for comment, a joint policy statement that describes the process the banking agencies will use to measure and assess the exposure of a bank's net economic value to changes in interest rates. After the banking agencies and banking industry gain sufficient experience with the proposed measurement process, the banking agencies intend, through a subsequent rulemaking process, to issue a proposed rule that would establish an explicit capital charge for interest rate risk that will be based upon the level of a bank's measured interest rate risk exposure.