Basel Committee on Banking Supervision

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is the body that brings together bank supervisory authorities from major economies to set common prudential standards and policy for bank capital, liquidity and funding, founded in 1974 and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, its secretariat hosted by the Bank for International Settlements. It has no founding treaty and issues no binding rules, functioning instead as an informal policy forum whose successive standards, Basel I (1988), Basel II (2004) and Basel III (2010), member jurisdictions are expected but not legally obliged to implement domestically. By the mid-2020s the committee comprised 45 members representing 28 jurisdictions, central banks and banking regulators from the world's major economies. Basel III, developed directly in response to the weaknesses the 2008 financial crisis exposed in bank capital and liquidity buffers, substantially tightened the capital and liquidity requirements the earlier accords had set.