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Updates der BCCG CONSULTING GMBH

Zunehmende Regulierungen - Abnehmende Anbieter

Initial Margin Requirements - Extension by one year of earlier set implementation dates

On April 14, 2020 the Swiss Regulator for Financial Institutions issued its Guidance 04/2020 on Exemptions for supervised institutions due to the COVID-19 crisis.

The above said crisis caused increased volatility. Hence, institutions using a model approach to market risk are recording an increased number of backtesting exceptions. To mitigate this volatility-related heightened pro-cyclicality, FINMA is introducing the following exemption for institutions authorized to apply the model approach to market risk. This number of exceptions will be frozen at the level of 1 February until 1 July 2020.

This exemption is based on Article 4 para. 3 of the Banking Act and Art. 88 para. 3 Capital Aequacy Ordinance and applies until 1 July 2020 and will be extended by FINMA if necessary.

In addition and in conformance with the joint statement published on 3 April 2020, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the International Organization of Securities Commissions have extended the deadline for completing the final two implementation phases of the margin requirements for non-centrally cleared OTC derivatives by one year.

FINMA has therefore adopted in line with the above-mentioned deferral of BCBA and IOSCO and on the basis of Art. 131 para. 6 of the Financial Marktet Infrastructure Ordinance (FMIO) and is extending the timeframes set out in Art. 131 par. 5 let. d bis and let. e FMION by one year in each case.

In other words for counterparts whose aggregated month-end average gross Derivatives position at group or financial or insurance level Initial Margins have to be exchanged

  1. is greater than CHF 50 billion for each of the months of March, April and May 2021:
    from 1 September 2021

  2. is greater than CHF 8 billion for each of the months of March, April and May 2022:
    from 1 September 2022

Beat Gabathuler