Since 2011, the EBA has been conducting transparency exercises at the EU-wide level on an annual basis. These exercises are part of the EBA's ongoing efforts to foster transparency and market discipline in the EU financial market, and complements banks' own Pillar 3 disclosures, as laid down in the CRD IV.
Further, the transparency exercises are, unlike the stress tests, disclosure exercises where only bank-by-bank data are published and no shocks are applied to the actual data.
2018 EU-wide transparency exercise results
In December 2018, the EBA published the results of the EU-wide 2018 transparency exercise, which will facilitate the consistent comparison and assessment of the resilience of banks across time and at a country and a bank-by-bank level. In particular, this document assesses the results relative to the potential impact on, among others, capital, leverage, risk weighted assets (RWAs), P&L, credit risk, market risk, or asset quality.
According to the results of this exercise, the EU banking sector has continued to benefit from the positive macroeconomic developments in most European countries, which contributed to the increase in lending, further strengthening of banks' capital ratios and improvements in asset quality. Profitability remains low on average and has not yet reached sustainable levels.
This Technical Note analyses the main 2018 EU-wide transparency exercise results focusing on the aggregated results across the EU, as well as on the results of the countries with the highest volume of assets within the banking system.
Executive Summary
The EBA published in December 2018 the result of the 2018 EU-wide transparency exercise, which provide detailed information on, among others, capital, leverage, RWA, P&L, credit risk, market risk, or asset quality.
Area of application
The 2018 EU-wide transparency exercise is applicable to 130 banks from 25 European Economic Area countries at the highest EU level of consolidation.
Main content
This Technical Note analyses the aggregate results relative to the potential impact on the following aspects:
- Capital: the CET 1 ratio moves from 14.6% fully loaded in December 2017 to 14.3% in June 2018 due to seasonality factors and the first application of IFRS 9.
- Leverage ratio (LR): the LR moves from 5.37% fully loaded in December 2017 to 5.12% in June 2018.
- RWAs: the total RWAs have increased a 1.15% in June 2018, compared to December 2017. Credit and market risks were the main drivers of the RWA increase in 2018.
- Non-performing Loans (NPLs) and Forborne Loans (FBLs): the NPL ratio moves from 4.1% in December 2017 to 3.6% in June 2018 due to the significant reductions of NPL sales, especially in the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) sector. The FBLs ratio also decreases from 2.60% in December 2017 to 2.30% in June 2018.
- P&L: net interest income (NII), net fee and commission income, and the aggregate P&L have declined in June 2018, compared with December 2017.
In addition, this Technical Note includes the individual results for each of the major geographies, i.e. Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and UK.
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