New Approaches to Capital Adequacy
New approaches were required to the regulation of the capital adequacy of banks, accepting
that these have been extensively revised by the introduction of Basel II, which has aimed to
achieve greater sensitivity of capital levels to the different risks that banks are running. It is
important to remember that the crisis developed under the Basel I regime, not Basel II, and
that Basel II would have addressed some of the problems which led to it – for instance, the
failure to distinguish between the capital required to support mortgages of different credit
quality. However, it would appear that Basel II still needs to be adjusted for instance by
introducing higher levels of bank capital to reflect the nature of the recent financial crisis.