The Financial Regulator’s seminar/training course has been designed to equip financial regulatory professionals from around the world to understand and adapt to these developments.

MONDAY: New market structure and actors
Capital markets are changing at unprecedented speed and becoming increasingly complex and interconnected.   Internet-based financial entities are beginning to undercut established rivals, and key institutions are merging to form financial conglomerates which span the globe. This session examines some of the key challenges posed by these developments. Finally, we examine whether supervisors can develop early warning systems to help forestall financial instability.

TUESDAY: Global standards for financial supervisors
Besides changing markets, national supervisors and market participants face a radically-altered landscape of international regulatory cooperation. In particular they are now asked to conform to a series of international minimum standards for financial sector supervision, data reporting, transparency and others. Some of the key personnel involved discuss the implications for supervisors.

WEDNESDAY: The new Basel accord
The Basel Committee has set an ambitious timetable for the implementation of its complex new accord which requires supervisors around the world to develop new skills and exercise a host of new and complex judgments about the way banks manage risk.  In particular:

THURSDAY: Measuring regulatory success
Supervisors are under intense pressure to demonstrate that they are operating efficiently and proportionately.

In all areas, this seminar is designed to give supervisors and directors of regulatory affairs and their advisers an opportunity to “benchmark” their work against best practice in key areas and to exchange views with their peers in an informal setting.  

The conference organiser and sponsor, Central Banking Publications Ltd, is an independent financial publishing house specialising in research and consultancy into public policy and financial markets.  Since 1996 The Financial Regulator Journal (published by Central Banking Publications) has been at the forefront of reporting and analysing the developing agenda of international financial regulation.

The Financial Regulator is backed by a distinguished advisory board whose members include: Anthony Neoh, former chairman of the Hong Kong SFC and of the IOSCO technical committee; Edward J. Waitzer, former chairman of the Ontario Securities Commission; Alan Cameron, former chairman of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission; Brian Quinn, former executive director of the Bank of England and Professor Richard Dale, from the University of Southampton.  

Distinguished panel of experts
Among the distinguished panel of expert presenters at the course in September will be leading financial supervisors, central bankers, practitioners and academics:

For more information about the programme, please read on.
I look forward to welcoming you to Cambridge.

Yours Sincerely,

William Clarke, CBE, PhD
Chairman, Central Banking Publications Ltd.

MONDAY 10th SEPTEMBER

Global and national financial markets continue to develop at breakneck pace. Financial market authorities around the world have to run to keep up.  We examine some of the key drivers for change in regional and national financial markets.

Kenneth Lay
Treasurer’s Department, World Bank
Key trends in international capital markets

What will be the dominant trends driving change in the money and capital markets in the coming years?  What are the implications of the slowdown in the US economy and especially the tech sector?  How will the new Basel capital rules affect the international macroeconomy over the coming years?  This session sets the scene for those which are to follow by exploring the changing financial landscape in international capital markets in particular examining likely developments within (a) OECD countries (b) middle- and high- income emerging markets (c) low-income countries.

Jeremy Quick
Operational Risk Manager, UK Financial Services Authority
What e-finance means for supervisors

Despite the bursting of the dot.com bubble, e-finance (the provision of financial services over the internet) still concerns supervisors, who face serious challenges regulating banks and brokers trading online.  First, they must understand the new risks and security problems which institutions can face online. Second, they need to understand and adapt to the regulatory implications of cross-border electronic transactions.  Here, a member of the Basel Committee’s study of the implications of electronic banking describes this initiative and the UK FSA’s approach to online finance.

Glenn Hoggarth
Financial Stability Wing, Bank of England
What financial conglomeration means for supervisors

Within the last five years, the world’s largest financial institutions have grown much larger due to mergers between banks and other financial institutions.  The challenges of supervising these large merged institutions are driving the supervisory agenda in London and New York.  Here we examine what this increase in size means for financial supervisors – both as home and host regulators.

Alastair Clark
Executive Director,  Financial Stability Wing, Bank of England
Monitoring financial stability

TUESDAY 11th SEPTEMBER

GLOBAL STANDARDS FOR FINANCIAL SUPERVISORS

Udaibir Das
Monetary and Exchange Affairs Department, nternational Monetary Fund
Standards and codes and the role of the IMF

The IMF is taking the lead role within international financial institutions in assessing how well member countries implement international financial standards, through their Financial Sector Assessment Programme and Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes.  How do the IMF approach their assessments?  How can countries being assessed best manage the process?

William Witherell
Director, Financial, Fiscal and Enterprise Affairs, OECD
The OECD and standards

One of the crucial tasks of the standards assessment project is to ensure that standards are appropriate for the jurisdictions expected to adopt them.

Marcus Killick
Partner, KPMG (leader of the review of the overseas territories)
Case study: UK overseas territories

Over the course of the last two years, six of the UK’s overseas territories have been subjected to a rigorous examination of their financial sector.  This case study examines the process from the point of view of those involved and considers how the relevant authorities can best react to the results of an assessment.  What help is available in capacity building and planning for the resource implications of reform?

George Vojta
former vice-chairman, Bankers Trust
Standards and the private sector

This session takes a practitioner’s view and argues that standards-based reform can be of distinct benefit to regulators around the world by their influence on private sector actors.  The speaker also outlines some of the initiatives underway to provide help with implementation and training.

George Vojta, Marcus Killick, Udaibir Das, William Witherell
Round table – standards in a world of globalised finance

Professor Charles Goodhart
Professor of Economics, London School of Economics
Measuring performance in central banking and financial regulation

Charles Goodhart has unrivalled experience as a practising central banker and a leading scholar of central banking and financial regulation. He draws on both practical and theoretical experience in this presentation on measuring performance. How can central banks set and monitor standards for their own performance whether in the fields of monetary policy or in supervision? Should they set internal standards distinct from those set for them, explicitly or implicitly, by  parliament or the public? In short, how do central bankers know when they are doing a good job and when they are falling short?

WEDNESDAY 12th SEPTEMBER

THE NEW BASEL ACCORD

Charles Freeland
Deputy secretary general of the Basel Committee
Implementing Basel II – new judgements, new skills, new staff

The proposed revision to the Basel capital accord will radically alter banking supervision around the world. This presentation details the key features of the new accord from the point of view of the supervisors who will be faced with implementing it.  What are the key new skills demanded of supervisors, and how can they develop them?

Dr Jon Danielsson
London School of Economics
Implementing the credit proposals – IRB approach and risk modelling

At the core of the new accord is the proposal that banks’ capital changes should be more risk-sensitive and depend more on the way in which banks themselves assess credit risks.  Advanced options in the accord will involve extensive use of credit and operational risk models.  We examine some of the difficulties which this may pose.

Colin Lawrence
Former global head of risk management, Barclays Capital
Key skills – pillar 1

The first pillar of the accord sets forth a series of new treatments for setting capital charges.  The intention is that all supervisors should have adopted this by 2004.  This will require central bankers and supervisors to evaluate and ratify risk management practices, even as banks themselves upgrade systems.  We examine the key stages in the development of risk management systems, and look at the various inputs which supervisors will have to supply to calibrate these models.

John Tattersall
Head of regulatory practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Key skills – pillar 2

The second pillar of the accord is supervisory review.  Under this approach supervisors will be expected to raise or reduce capital charges according to their judgements about how well individual banks manage risk.  For most supervisors this is a clear departure from a non-discriminatory rule-based approach.  How can this capacity be introduced?  How can regulated banks aid the process?

Roundtable – Challenges to Supervisors from Basel II
Chaired by Dr Max Hall

Avinash Persaud
Global Head of Research, State Street Bank
Pillar III

The final  pillar of the new accord (disclosure) obliges banks to provide much more information about their balance sheet and risk.  This raises serious competitive concerns for many banks.  What can supervisors do to encourage effective market discipline and disclosure?

THURSDAY 13th SEPTEMBER

EASURING REGULATORY SUCCESS

Alan Cameron
Former chairman, Australian Securities and Investments Commission
Measuring success:  matching outputs to objectives

Under pressure to be seen to be “tough” yet wanting to avoid heavy-handed regulation, supervisors face a dilemma: they may be damned if they act and damned if they don’t.  For this reason many regulatory authorities are trying to define more clearly what it is they can deliver, and what they cannot.  This session examines the importance of well-defined regulatory objectives.

Isaac Alfon
Central Policy Unit, Financial Services Authority
Cost-benefit analysis in rulemaking?

One way for supervisors to demonstrate that they are acting in a proportionate manner is to perform cost-benefit analyses of proposed rule-making.  More and more this is becoming a statutory requirement as it is for the UK Financial Services Authority on whose experiences this session draws.

ROUNDTABLE: MEASURING REGULATORY SUCCESS