Basel I & II

The Basel Accords, Basel I and Basel II, refer to two rounds of deliberations and agreements made by an international committee of banking regulators known as the Basel Committee who met in Basel, Switzerland.

The Basel Committee represents the Group of Ten nations (Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S.), but the Basel agreements are largely accepted by many nations around the world.

Basel I, signed in 1988 and passed by law in the G10 countries in 1992, established minimum requirements for banks’ capital holdings. Basel II, published in 2004, is designed to make those minimum requirements stronger in order to better guard against bank failures. Basel II is in different stages of implementation around the world