Banks will need a decade to meet Basel's data challenge

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision is pressing banks to clean up their act when it comes to risk data. This is a commendable and long-overdue initiative, David Rowe says – but supervisors may not understand the magnitude of the task.

Last September, I commended the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision for its plan to raise the industry’s risk data standards (Risk September 2013). Three months later, the committee produced its initial report, looking at the progress made towards its Principles for effective risk data aggregation and reporting,¹ published at the start of last year.

Several themes recur throughout this progress report, which is based in part on the banks’ self-assessments of their compliance with these 11