Executive summary
1. Interest rate risk in the banking book (IRRBB) is part of the Basel capital framework’s Pillar 2 (Supervisory Review Process) and subject to the Committee’s guidance set out in the 2004 Principles for the management and supervision of interest rate risk (henceforth, the IRR Principles). The IRR Principles lay out the Committee’s expectations for banks’ identification, measurement, monitoring and control of IRRBB as well as its supervision.
2. The Committee has decided that the IRR Principles need to be updated to reflect changes in market and supervisory practices since they were first published, and this document contains an updated version that revises both the Principles and the methods expected to be used by banks for measuring, managing, monitoring and controlling such risks.
3. These updated Principles were the subject of consultation in 2015, when the Committee presented two options for the regulatory treatments of IRRBB: a standardised Pillar 1 (Minimum Capital Requirements) approach and an enhanced Pillar 2 approach (which also included elements of Pillar 3 - Market Discipline). The Committee noted the industry’s feedback on the feasibility of a Pillar 1 approach to IRRBB, in particular the complexities involved in formulating a standardised measure of IRRBB which would be both sufficiently accurate and risk-sensitive to allow it to act as a means of setting regulatory capital requirements. The Committee concludes that the heterogeneous nature of IRRBB would be more appropriately captured in Pillar 2.