BoE’s Carney sees changes to UK financial rules after Brexit

By Huw Jones

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s regulators will tweak banking and insurance rules inherited from the European Union after Brexit to make them more tailored to the British market, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said on Wednesday.

Carney said Britain had long expressed opposition to the EU’s cap on banker bonuses, the full application of banking capital rules on smaller lenders and the bloc’s insurance capital rules.

“There are areas where we would make changes, but within the context of maintaining overall levels of resilience,” Carney told an industry event.

He said the BoE’s Financial Policy Committee reiterated on Tuesday it was committed to maintaining current high standards of regulation after Britain’s departure from the EU in March 2019 to maintain resilience to shocks in the financial system.

Britain lost a battle to stop the bonus cap after arguing that it would simply encourage banks to hike basic pay to get round it. It also said it would make lenders less nimble in cutting costs in a downturn.

Britain also wants to change an element in the EU’s Solvency II capital rules for insurers. It has sought to make bank capital requirements for smaller lenders more “proportionate”.

Separately on Wednesday, Financial Conduct Authority Chief Executive Andrew Bailey told a parliamentary hearing that Britain’s decision to leave the EU meant the UK had “lost traction” to change rules while it was a member of the bloc.

Some lawmakers want Britain to row back on EU rules after Brexit to maintain London’s global dominance in finance.

Carney said it was essential to maintain high regulatory standards because Britain’s financial sector could grow to 15 to 20 times gross domestic product in the next couple of decades, up from about 10 times at present.

He also signaled there would be changes to the so-called fundamental review of the trading book (FRTB), a set of rules drawn up by the global Basel Committee of banking supervisors to ensure banks set aside enough capital against trading risks.

The FRTB has not been “calibrated” properly, meaning it was too strict on models used by big banks to calculate capital requirements, he said.

Basel’s oversight body, on which he sits, meets next week and is expected to make announcements on banking rules.

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