Two U.S. House lawmakers again urged regulators to consider the needs of community banks as they craft rules implementing Basel III’s capital requirements in the United States. Reps. Shelley Moore Capito R., W.Va., and Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said the final rules should be “appropriate for the wide range of financial institutions that comprise our financial system.”
Community bankers and some lawmakers argued that Basel III was designed for large, internationally active banks. Capito and Maloney said in their Feb. 19 letter to regulators that applying the Basel III capital requirements to community and regional banks “could have a significant negative economic effect.”