YEREVAN, May 14. /ARKA/. A three-day seminar was launched today in Yerevan for discussing Basel III essential principles, the press office of the Central Bank of Armenia reports.

The seminar was organized by the Central Bank of Armenia, the Financial Stability Institute and Group of Banking Supervisors from Central and Eastern Europe (BSCEE Group).

More than 20 specialists from the central banks of Lithuania, Montenegro, Serbia, Estonia, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belarus, Macedonia, Russia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Georgia and Armenia gathered here to discuss the matter. .

The latest changes to banking supervision principles, Armenia and Austria’s experience and the Austrian model of banking supervision will be presented here. Macro prudential regulation, risk regulation and corporate regulation will be discussed here. Practical training will be conducted as well.

Basel III (or the Third Basel Accord) is a global regulatory standard on bank capital adequacy, stress testing and market liquidity risk agreed upon by the members of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in 2010–11, and scheduled to be introduced from 2013 until 2018. The third installment of the Basel Accords was developed in response to the deficiencies in financial regulation revealed by the late-2000s financial crisis. Basel III strengthens bank capital requirements and introduces new regulatory requirements on bank liquidity and bank leverage.

Armenian banks’ transition to Basel III norms is expected to be completed in 2014. --0---