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3.4. The Basel Capital Accord and Provisioning

Effective from Jan 01 2024 - Dec 31 2023
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The Basel 2 Capital Accord provides incentives to internationally active banks to develop and implement sophisticated and advance system for measuring and capturing credit, market and operational risks. For credit risk, it encourages banks to develop and implement sophisticated internal ratings based approaches. As a minimum, it requires all credit risk on the bank’s banking book to be classified into a system that has as a minimum 7 grades for performing loans and one for non-performing loans. It also requires banks to gather data for a minimum of 3 years on their history of losses arising from loan defaults. Data gathered from such systems permits banks and supervisors to collect information on Probability of Default (PD), Loss Given Default (LGD), and Expected Amount at Default (EAD). Such data permits banks to compute a capital charge for capital ratio purposes, using the risk weighted assets models designed by Basel under the IRB approach. 
 
SAMA encourages all Saudi banks to understand, develop and implement, where cost-justified and appropriate, IRB approaches for capital adequacy purposes. While the IRB systems are primarily aimed at computation of regulatory capital, it is understood that the information on historical loss experience may have relevance for a bank’s calculation of general provisions. Consequently, SAMA will encourage Saudi banks to look into ways of aligning their capital adequacy and provisioning methodologies.