The Basle Committee on Banking Supervision, with the
agreement of the central bank Governors of the Group of Ten
countries, is today issuing for public comment a paper containing a
set of Principles for the Management of Interest Rate Risk.
This paper emphasizes the need for banks to maintain
adequate risk management practices and identifies specific, agreed
upon principles that supervisors will consider in evaluating a
bank's management of interest rate risk.
The document addresses the importance of board of
director and senior management oversight of a comprehensive risk
management process that effectively identifies, measures,
monitors, and controls a bank's risk exposure. It is fully consistent
with the Joint Agency Policy Statement on Interest Rate Risk
issued in the United States in June 1996 by the federal banking
agencies and circulated to all U.S. insured commercial banks. U.
S. banks should continue to comply with the joint agency
statement.
Copies of the Committee's proposal are available at the
offices of the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the
Currency, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The
statement is also available on the Internet Web Side of the Bank
for International
Settlements at http://www.bis.org. Comments are requested by
April 15, 1997, and may be sent directly to the Basle Committee
Secretariat at the BIS or to any of the three bank regulatory
agencies.
Congress created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 1933 to
restore public confidence in the nation's banking system. The FDIC
insures deposits at the nation's 11,547 banks and savings associations,
and it promotes the safety and soundness of these institutions by
identifying, monitoring and addressing risks to which they are exposed.
FDIC press releases and other information are available on the Internet
via the World Wide Web at www.fdic.gov.
