(Bloomberg) — The Treasury is poised to start a consultation to bolster the UK’s bank resolution toolkit, after the crisis at Silicon Valley Bank revealed some shortcomings, according to the City minister.
Bim Afolami, economic secretary to the Treasury, said SVB’s collapse showed the UK resolution regime worked but that it is looking at ways to make it as “solid as possible” following a rush by businesses to withdraw money.
A consultation proposing measures to strengthen the resolution regime “will come quite soon,” Afolami revealed.
“When the consultation comes out, there will then be a debate about exactly how best to get that strong foundation for institutions that may not be covered at the moment,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg News.
SVB UK’s business customers rushed to pull money out of the bank with many startups facing losses on deposits above the £85,000 ($106,900) protection limit. While the crisis was resolved with HSBC Holdings Plc buying SVB’s UK unit, it heightened concerns over whether deposit insurance was high enough and the strength of Britain’s resolution regime, which aims to allow banks to fail safely.
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Bloomberg reported in June that the Bank of England was considering reforms that would see funds from the industry’s deposit protection program used to strengthen the books of ailing lenders. Sam Woods, head of the Prudential Regulation Authority, said on Wednesday that the central bank is discussing bolstering the resolution toolkit with the Treasury, saying the work is “pretty well advanced.”
Afolami said that the government will launch a slew of measures in the coming months to reduce the regulatory burden on the City of London. A year on since the so-called Edinburgh Reforms were launched, he said it will take time for the reforms to “bed in” after MPs on the Treasury Committee called the changes to City regulations a “damp squib.”
In the coming weeks and months, “there’ll be a lot of statutory instruments that will be implementing things, there’ll be lots of consultations,” he said.
Afolami said that a review of the senior managers regime — which holds bankers personally responsible for rulebreaking on their watch — would only lead to an evolution in the regulations rather than an overhaul.
“We’re not throwing it out, it’s a really important part of our regulatory structure,” he added.
–With assistance from William Shaw.
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