• Basel II, the second of the three Basel Accords, has three core principles: minimum capital requirements, regulatory oversight and market discipline.

  • Building on Basel I, Basel II provided guidance on the calculation of minimum regulatory capital adequacy ratios and reaffirmed the requirement that banks maintain a capital reserve equal to at least 8% of their risk-weighted assets.
  • The second pillar of Basel II, regulatory supervision, provides national regulators with a framework to deal with, among other things, systemic risk, liquidity risk, and legal risk.
  • One weakness of Basel II emerged during the subprime crash and the Great Recession of 2008, when it became clear that Basel II had underestimated the risks associated with current banking practices and that the financial system was over-leveraged and undercapitalized.