Romania's BNR asks systemically important banks to boost capital buffer

The National Committee for Macroprudential Oversight (NCMO) decided to increase the anticyclical capital buffer applied to the nine systemic risk banks. The largest capital reserve, of 2%, will be constituted by the largest bank in the system, Banca Transilvania.

"There are nine systemically important banks. The largest is Banca Transilvania, which will have the largest additional capital buffer of 2%, followed by UniCredit, BRD, and BCR, which will have an additional capital requirement of 1.5%, followed in order by Raiffeisen Bank, with 1%, OTP Bank, Alpha Bank and Eximbank, each with 0.5%", said Florian Neagu, deputy director of financial stability at BNR, Economica.net reported.

For many banks, the capital buffer is doubled compared to the current level.

Also, the BNR representative said that he will look very carefully at the dividend policy as well, all the more so since, during the pandemic, the BNR's recommendations in this regard gave good results.

The NCMO encourages credit institutions to have very prudent conduct in the period ahead regarding the dividend distribution policy, conducive to strengthening capitalisation, to adequately respond to the turmoil that may manifest in the near future. The NCMO will carefully monitor, in close cooperation with the National Bank of Romania, the way in which credit institutions calibrate their dividend distribution policy.

"We will ask the banks to be cautious and make sure that they face overlapping crises", said Florian Neagu.

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