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Finance

Securitisation

Commission proposals to further develop capital markets and  to support Europe’s economy and green transition through sound securitisations.

What the EU is doing and why

When banks and other credit institutions package loans into securities and then sell them to investors, it's called 'securitisation'. It lets banks transfer the risk of some loans to other banks or long-term investors such as insurance companies and asset managers. This allows banks to use the capital that was set aside to cover the risk in those loans to create and sell new loans.

This freed-up space in balance sheets can be used to support many of the challenges that the EU economy is facing, including the green transition, which will require vast amounts of financing from private and public investors alike. If opaque, however, securitisation can amplify vulnerabilities across the financial system, as was the case during the US subprime mortgage crisis beginning in 2007.

This is why, as part of the Capital Markets Union Action Plan, the EU has put in place a sound framework that removes the harmful practices of the past and incentivises safe market practices. The revised securitisation framework came into application in 2019. Its core objective is to establish an EU securitisation market that helps finance the economy without creating risks to financial stability. The framework consists of

In 2021, as part of the Capital Market Recovery Package, the scope of the simple transparent and standardised (STS) label was expanded to on-balance-sheet synthetic securitisations through an amendment of the Securitisation Regulation and regulatory obstacles for securitisation of non-performing exposures were removed through an amendment of the CRR.

In 2022-2023, we are working on a number of policy initiatives

  • a framework for green securitisation in the context of the European green bond standard
  • regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) on risk retention, performance related triggers, principal adverse impact on sustainability factors, homogeneity and synthetic excess spread
  • reviewing the disclosure templates under Article 7 of the Securitisation Regulation

Background

A number of global initiatives fed into the revision of the European securitisation framework

  • the BCBS published revised standards on the capital treatment of banks’ exposures to securitisations in December 2014
  • the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) and the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) developed a set of criteria to identify simple, transparent and comparable (STC) securitisation instruments. The global criteria were issued on 23 July 2015. The EU STS criteria are broadly aligned with the BCBS criteria

The amendments in 2021 were based on the following inputs from the European Banking Authority and the BCBS

Policy making timeline

  1. 6 April 2021
    Legislation

    Coming into application of amended Securitisation Regulation and CRR to support the economic recovery in response to the COVID-19 crisis

  2. 12 December 2017
    Legislation

    Adoption of the Securitisation Regulation and of an amendment to the Regulation on Capital Requirements

  3. 18 February 2015
    Consultation

Relevant legislation