This publication presents recent OECD papers on risk and regulatory policy. They offer measures for developing, or improving, coherent risk governance policies.
This document presents more detailed proposals for financial regulation following on from the consultation paper "A new approach to financial regulation: judgment, focus and stability" (July 2010, Cm. 7874, ISBN 9780101787420) and continuing policy development by the Treasury, Bank of England and Financial Services Authority. The Government's reforms focus on three key institutional changes. First, a new Financial Policy Committee (FPC) will be established in the Bank of England, with responsibility for 'macro-prudential' regulation, or regulation of stability and resilience of the financial system as a whole. Second, 'micro-prudential' (firm-specific) regulation of financial institutions that manage significant risks on their balance sheets will be carried out by an operationally independent subsidiary of the Bank of England, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA). Thirdly, responsibility for conduct of business regulation will be transferred to a new specialist regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Individual chapters cover: Bank of England and Financial Policy Committee; Prudential Regulation Authority; Financial Conduct Authority; regulatory process and co-ordination; compensation, dispute resolution and financial education; European and international issues; next steps; how to respond; impact assessment. The chapters contain significant detail on how the legislative framework will be constructed in order to deliver the Governments' priorities for the framework. The Government will consult on these proposals with a view to publishing a draft bill in spring 2011.
"On 25 February 2009 the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services resolved to inquire into and report by 23 November 2009 on the issues associated with recent financial product and services provider collapses, such as Storm Financial, Opes Prime and other similar collapses ... "--P. vii.
This document outlines the Government's programme of reform to renew the UK's system of financial regulation. It believes that weaknesses were inherent in the tripartite approach whereby three authorities - the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority and the Treasury - were collectively responsible for financial stability. The Government will create a new Financial Policy Committee (FPC) in the Bank of England with primary statutory duty to maintain financial stability. The FPC will be given control of macro-prudential tools to ensure that systemic risks to financial stability are dealt with. This macro-prudential regulation must be co-ordinated with the prudential regulation of individual firms. Operational responsibility for prudential regulation will transfer from the FSA to a new subsidiary of the Bank of England, the Prudential Regulation Authority. The third development is the creation of a dedicated Consumer Protection and Markets Authority (CPMA) with a primary statutory responsibility to promote confidence in financial services and markets. Protection of consumers will be delivered though a strong consumer division within CPMA. The document also covers: the issue of market regulation; co-ordination of the regulatory bodies in a potential crisis; the next steps, including public consultation, legislative passage and operational implementation. The Government will, after considering responses, produce more detailed proposals - including draft legislation - for further consultation in early 2011, with a view to having legislation on the statute book within two years.
The purpose of the 'Microfinance Handbook' is to bring together in a single source guiding principles and tools that will promote sustainable microfinance and create viable institutions.
In this sprawling and ambitious book John Braithwaite successfully manages to link the contemporary dynamics of macro political economy to the dynamics of citizen engagement and organisational activism at the micro intestacies of governance practices. This is no mean feat and the logic works. . . Stephen Bell, The Australian Journal of Public Administration Everyone who is puzzled by modern regulocracy should read this book. Short and incisive, it represents the culmination of over twenty years work on the subject. It offers us a perceptive and wide-ranging perspective on the global development of regulatory capitalism and an important analysis of points of leverage for democrats and reformers. Christopher Hood, All Souls College, Oxford, UK It takes a great mind to produce a book that is indispensable for beginners and experts, theorists and policymakers alike. With characteristic clarity, admirable brevity, and his inimitable mix of description and prescription, John Braithwaite explains how corporations and states regulate each other in the complex global system dubbed regulatory capitalism. For Braithwaite aficionados, Regulatory Capitalism brings into focus the big picture created from years of meticulous research. For Braithwaite novices, it is a reading guide that cannot fail to inspire them to learn more. Carol A. Heimer, Northwestern University, US Reading Regulatory Capitalism is like opening your eyes. John Braithwaite brings together law, politics, and economics to give us a map and a vocabulary for the world we actually see all around us. He weaves together elements of over a decade of scholarship on the nature of the state, regulation, industrial organization, and intellectual property in an elegant, readable, and indispensable volume. Anne-Marie Slaughter, Princeton University, US Encyclopedic in scope, chock full of provocative even jarring claims, Regulatory Capitalism shows John Braithwaite at his transcendental best. Ian Ayres, Yale Law School, Yale University, US Contemporary societies have more vibrant markets than past ones. Yet they are more heavily populated by private and public regulators. This book explores the features of such a regulatory capitalism, its tendencies to be cyclically crisis-ridden, ritualistic and governed through networks. New ways of thinking about resultant policy challenges are developed. At the heart of this latest work by John Braithwaite lies the insight by David Levi-Faur and Jacint Jordana that the welfare state was succeeded in the 1970s by regulatory capitalism. The book argues that this has produced stronger markets, public regulation, private regulation and hybrid private/public regulation as well as new challenges such as a more cyclical quality to crises of market and governance failure, regulatory ritualism and markets in vice. However, regulatory capitalism also creates opportunities for better design of markets in virtue such as markets in continuous improvement, privatized enforcement of regulation, open source business models, regulatory pyramids with networked escalation and meta-governance of justice. Regulatory Capitalism will be warmly welcomed by regulatory scholars in political science, sociology, history, economics, business schools and law schools as well as regulatory bureaucrats, policy thinkers in government and law and society scholars.
The Independent Commission on Banking's final recommendations aim to create a more stable and competitive basis for UK banking for the long term. The result would be a banking system that is much less likely to cause, or succumb to, financial crises and the huge costs they bring; is self-reliant, so that the taxpayer does not have to bear the losses that banks make; and is effective and efficient at providing the basic banking services of safeguarding retail deposits, operating secure payments systems, and efficiently channelling savings to productive investments in the economy. Stability is crucial and UK banks should have more equity capital and loss-absorbing debt - beyond what has so far been internationally agreed - and their retail banking activities should be structurally separated, by a ring-fence, from wholesale and investment banking activities. The Commission also address competition, which has not been properly effective in UK retail banking. They recommend a seamless switching system based on redirection for personal and small business current accounts, free of cost and risk, complemented by measures to enhance transparency. The new Financial Conduct Authority should have a clear duty to promote effective competition. Structural reform should be complete by the Basel implementation date of 2019 at the latest. These reforms would result in better-capitalised, less leveraged banking more focused on the needs of savers and borrowers in the domestic economy. At the same time UK banks would be free to flourish in global markets, but without UK taxpayer support.
In autumn 2008, Britain's banking system came perilously close to collapse. To avert catastrophe, the Government was forced to step in with multi-billion pound bailouts. Many factors led to this crisis including failings in financial supervision and fuzzy allocation of responsibilities for preventing and managing systemic crises. The draft Financial Services Bill (printed as chapter 5 of 'A new approach to financial regulation: the blueprint for reform' (Cm. 8083, June 2011, 9780101808323) is aimed at preventing such a potentially calamitous systemic failure of the financial sector occurring again. It proposes far reaching changes to the regulatory structure, replacing the tripartite system of financial regulation with a twin peaks model. The Joint Committee's recommendations are intended to ensure that the new regulatory authorities have the right objectives, powers and responsibilities and systems of accountability which will be essential to make them effective.