ANZ National Gets Reserve Bank Accredition

Monday 10 December 2007

ANZ National Receives Basel II Accreditation From Reserve Bank

ANZ National’s accreditation under the new Basel II risk management framework was announced today by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.

This is welcome news for ANZ National and reinforces its position as New Zealand’s leading financial services organisation, says CEO Graham Hodges.

The Basel II framework comes into effect in New Zealand and Australia in January 2008 and sets in place a new approach to how banks measure their exposure to risk and the resulting capital requirements.

“ANZ National’s accreditation demonstrates to the market that we have world class risk management processes in place for credit risk, operational risk and market risk,” says Mr Hodges.

“The investment we have made in our risk management framework to get to this point gives us an improved capability to measure and therefore manage our exposures,” he says.

”We have already seen benefits from this work with some significant improvements to the speed and consistency of our customer credit decisions. This work also provides a great platform on which we can make further improvements to our risk models for the benefit of our customers and the Bank.”

In a simultaneous announcement by the Australian banking regulator APRA, ANZ National’s parent organisation ANZ Banking Group has also received an accreditation.

Basel II

In 1988, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision introduced its Capital Accord which was a set of risk measures in order to establish required levels of capital to be held by banks. The Australian and New Zealand current regulatory capital requirements (managed by APRA and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand) are based on this accord.

Changes to the business of banking, risk management practices, supervisory approaches and financial markets warranted adoption of a more sophisticated approach to capital management. The Basel Committee also realised that the best way to measure, manage and mitigate risks differed from bank to bank.

An amendment to the 1988 accord was introduced in 1996 which focussed on trading risks and allowed some banks for the first time to use their own systems to measure their market risks. In June 1999, the Committee commenced its work in conjunction with industry to develop a more risk-sensitive framework. The final version of the new Accord was released in July 2004 and will be implemented in New Zealand in January 2008.

For more information see www.rbnz.govt.nz

ENDS

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