Market risk reporting in banking overcoming the limits of IAS/IFRS and Basel regulation

Abstract

Market risk in banking activity is becoming a more severe issue day by day for several reasons. Analysing it from a regulatory point of view is fundamental for assessing whether or not banks are in the conditions of disclosing a satisfactory degree of information about their market risk exposure. The two regulatory constraints to consider are International Accounting Standards (IAS/IFRS) and the Basel regulation. Both of them seem to put too many constraints on banks. They turn out to be over-over-regulated. Even if regulators put many efforts in trying to provide a useful regulation for banks' risk reporting and capital adequacy, we are still far from a good regulation. The regulatory process for banks must be an ongoing and evolutionary one, but probably, it is not enough. A possible solution to this issue could be giving a greater importance to the supervisory function, rather than imposing additional constraints.