Swiss Banks Lobbying For FRTB Delay: Little Surprise After EU, US Moves

UBS (UBS: A3 dev/A-/A) is reportedly, along with the other large Swiss banks, lobbying local regulators over delaying FRTB implementation into 2026. This follows on from yesterday’s story about the ECB looking at the same after the US made it clear 2025 implementation deadlines would be missed. FTRB implementation should be a net credit positive, in our view, but the total capital impact only looks like a few percentage points, so this is a delay to a small positive, in short

• Little surprise that the Swiss don’t want to be the only banks in the world operating under this tighter capital regime for trading books. Banks mentioned in the BBG story include UBS, ZKB, Raiffeisen and PostFinance.
• As we wrote yesterday, we only see this moving capital requirements for bank in the low single digit percent range. Any improvement in risk management and capital backing should, all being equal, be a credit positive but this appears a case of a minor positive being pushed back in time a little.