The Cost Impact of Basel III across ASEAN-5

Prior to the first installment of the Basel standards introduced by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, internationally active banks across G-10 countries were believed to operate in an unsafe and unsound manner; furthermore, these banks¿ capital adequacy measurements were varied as well as disparate making the task of regulators and the supervisory community extremely challenging to assess whether a bank or a banking sector had adequate capital. The homegrown Asian crisis in the late 1990s and the global financial crisis of 2008 unmistakably proved that the systematic assessment of both systemically important banks and banking sectors was imperative. Farfetched implications of financial crises in the new millennium have jolted societies from their roots, dislocated innumerable banking systems, and displaced millions of people worldwide. Against the backdrop of amplified financial turmoil since 2009, both the implementation of Basel III and the use of macro stress testing as a crisis management tool have become a central focus.