UK banks find various ways to de-risk

Big UK banks became less risky in 2018, regulatory disclosures show.

Five large lenders – Barclays, Lloyds, HSBC, RBS and Standard Chartered – all reported lower risk-weighted assets for end-2018 compared with a year ago, but with different reasons for their respective drops.  

Standard Chartered saw RWAs fall $21.5 billion (7.7%) to $258.3 billion over the year, with $9.3 billion of savings achieved through undefined ‘RWA efficiencies’ and $5 billion through model updates. Foreign exchange