Jan 22, 2013 09:34
The current methodology to determine risk-weighted assets is somewhat simple. Presently, banks’ risk-weighting calculation categorizes assets into four risk-weighting categories: 0 percent, 20 percent, 50 percent, and 100 percent. A commercial loan, for example, is weighted at 100 percent. This weighting does not account for collateral, cash flow or character. Moreover, it does not account for the complexities that have surfaced over the past several years with cross-collateralization and multiple guarantors. Consequently, setting a regulatory capital requirement based on the existing risk-weighting calculation does not truly measure the different risk within each financial institution. [More]