BoE’s planned procyclical capital hike bewilders banks

Some doubt regulator will go through with countercyclical buffer hike while forecasting recession

Bankers and former regulators are questioning the Bank of England’s plan to increase a capital buffer designed to be raised when the economy is booming, at a time when its own monetary policy committee (MPC) thinks recession is looming.

“We’ve got an economy that isn’t rebounding as it was supposed to [after Covid],” says Adrian Docherty, head of bank advisory at BNP Paribas. “It’s obvious to anyone with their head screwed on that now is not the time to make it more difficult to provide credit