Post-Crisis Regulatory Change

I will look at two building blocks: regulatory reform and transaction banking. We will begin with an overview and analysis of the plethora of banking regulation that is focused on the bank as a whole. Usually known by the term ‘prudential regulation’, the regulation of deposit-taking institutions aims to ensure the safety of customer deposits and stability of the financial system. This overview will constitute the background to understanding and analysing the potential impact and implications of all these changes to the business of global transaction banking. The overview will be followed by an in-depth explanation of what transaction banking services actually are – payments, trade finance and securities services – and how these services support the real economy at a local, regional and global level. Armed with these insights we can then analyse the effect of key regulatory reforms, such as Basel III, in the following chapters. Given the many uncertainties in the implementation of new banking regulation, this analysis cannot cover every consequence for transaction banking. However, it provides an essential overview of the key regulatory pillars that support banking services today and how these are impacted by twenty-first century law reform. Alongside the many intended consequences, there is also a risk of unintended consequences that some of these reforms could bring for the transaction banking business and thus the functioning of financial markets as well as the and growth of the global economy overall.