Global Legal Insights

Banking has a global reach and ambition. It is also a heavily regulated industry. Simply staying abreast of the ongoing developments of the business and its regulatory environment is a challenge, even for the most dedicated specialist, let alone anticipating future change. Technological developments constantly threaten to disrupt the industry, but it remains difficult to predict whether, when or to what extent this will happen and how regulators will address the resulting challenges. Fintech has already triggered initiatives for regulatory change in numerous jurisdictions, but developments continue at a breathtaking pace. Furthermore, intermittent scandals and crises prompt regulators and lawmakers to launch new regulatory initiatives. For the legal practitioner, it is therefore important to look past the buzzwords and perform a thorough analysis from a legal and regulatory perspective in each individual case, futureproofing the advice given whenever possible.
This is where this book comes in. It provides general counsels, lawyers and regulators with a comprehensive insight into banking regulation in 19 jurisdictions around the world. The chapters have been written by leading practitioners in each jurisdiction, who provide their analysis and views on the current state of regulation and ongoing developments. To facilitate comparisons, the structure of each chapter is the same: it starts by introducing the reader to the architecture of the banking regulation in each jurisdiction, covering both the rules that are applicable to banks and the regulators in charge of supervising and enforcing them, followed by an overview of new trends and legal developments in banking and related areas.
The authors further address the key governance requirements, as well as aspects of internal control and risk management for financial institutions. The chapters extend to presenting regulatory capital requirements, analysing the role of national and international standards in defining these requirements, as well as the impact of international initiatives to improve capital and liquidity requirements in the jurisdictions that are surveyed. Finally, customer protection regulations are reviewed, covering not only rules that apply to the conduct of banks when dealing with clients, but also rules on cross-border services and anti-money laundering initiatives.
Overall, our hope is that this book will prove a stimulating and insightful read, which will prepare banks and their advisers not only to overcome but to master the challenges they and their clients are facing at a local and global level.