Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke provided updates on the plans of the central bank to determine its final interpretation of the Basel III capital requirements when he testified before a Senate Banking Committee on February 26, 2013.
This comes after U.S. government agencies announced late last year that they were postponing the adoption of the capital requirements in the U.S. They eliminated the previous deadline for beginning the implementation, starting in January 2013, and neglected to set forth a new timeline.
At the hearing, Bernanke indicated the intention of the Federal Reserve to finalize the rules, but did not identify a specific time when this would be done, according to Reuters.
"I can't give you the exact date, but somewhere in the middle of this year," he told the lawmakers present at the hearing. "We aim to be getting the implementation of Basel [III] during 2013."
He added that many of the U.S. lending institutions have already reached the capital adequacy ratios that are needed to be in compliance with the new rules.
The nation may have an easier time meeting the capital requirements since the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision announced earlier in 2013 that it was making the rules less stringent for lending institutions worldwide, widening the number of assets that could count toward the liquidity coverage ratio.