Basel II heralds a new ‘golden age’ for risk, says BofE's Jackson

Basel II is creating a new lingua franca for risk that will usher in a “golden age” of risk management, said Patricia Jackson, special adviser to the Bank of England, at Risk magazine’s Basel II Forum in London today. The debates surrounding the wording of the Accord should be largely over, according to Jackson, with market participants now moving towards the implementation process.

Jackson believes the overall impact of Basel II will be neutral for banks. She added that most reservations about Basel II are overstated or: “The Accord won’t change the basic structure of the market, no matter what some people would like to think.” But she admitted the outcome of the recently published third quantitative impact study (QIS 3) left some areas of concern. For example, QIS 3 flagged differences in standards and approaches to risk weightings by banks, meaning the supervisory