Macroprudential Regulation and Supervision: From the Identification of Systemic Risks to Policy Measures

Macroprudential regulation and supervision of systemic risks is one of the most discussed issues on both the national and international regulatory agenda. This rather new concept presents regulators and supervisors with a number of major challenges. First, in the sphere of risk identification and assessment, the main tasks will be assessing network effects, enhancing stress tests, expanding the supervisory scope to include nonbank financial intermediaries and distilling the findings from various analytical strands into an overall perspective on systemic risks. Second, although some systemic elements have been embedded in the “Basel III” framework, experience in implementing macroprudential policies is scarce and implementation is highly dependent on national circumstances, i.e. legal mandates and feasibility as well as authorities’ readiness to act. Third, in addition to the newly established European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB), some European (as well as non-European) countries have made considerable progress in establishing national systemic risk boards with extended legal rights and responsibilities for macroprudential regulation and supervision. Austria is lagging behind in this respect, and the legal mandate of regulatory and supervisory authorities remains vague and is largely restricted to monitoring financial stability. Besides giving an overview of the current discussion on macroprudential regulation and supervision, this paper provides an analysis of the state of play in Austria as well as some proposals to improve the current macroprudential framework.