The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday announced the inclusion of Airtel Payments Bank in the second schedule of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934.
The central bank also said that SBI, ICICI and HDFC banks will continue to be identified as Domestic Systemically Important Banks (D-SIBs), under the same bucketing structure as in the 2020 list of D-SIBs.
“The additional Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) requirement for D-SIBs was phased-in from April 1, 2016 and became fully effective from April 1, 2019. The additional CET1 requirement will be in addition to the capital conservation buffer,” the RBI statement read.
The RBI had issued the Framework for dealing with D-SIBs on July 22, 2014. The D-SIB framework requires the central bank to disclose the names of banks designated as D-SIBs starting from 2015 and place these banks in appropriate buckets depending upon their Systemic Importance Scores (SISs).
Based on the bucket in which a D-SIB is placed, an additional common equity requirement has to be applied to it. In case a foreign bank having branch presence in India is a Global Systemically Important Bank (G-SIB), it has to maintain additional CET1 capital surcharge in India as applicable to it as a G-SIB, proportionate to its Risk Weighted Assets (RWAs) in India, i.e., additional CET1 buffer prescribed by the home regulator (amount) multiplied by India RWA as per consolidated global Group books divided by total consolidated global Group RWA, it further said.
The RBI had announced SBI and ICICI Bank as D-SIBs in 2015 and 2016. Based on data collected from banks as on March 31, 2017, HDFC Bank was also classified as a D-SIB, along with SBI and ICICI Bank. The current update is based on the data collected from banks as on 31 March last year.
