Greek, Italian banks lead EU on IFRS 9 capital relief

Southern European banks benefited most from IFRS 9 capital relief measures in 2019, with transitional rules boosting year-end Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) capital ratios at Italian and Greek lenders by a full percentage point on average, the European Banking Authority’s (EBA) transparency exercise shows.

The stopgap measures, which allow banks to add back into their CET1 a portion of the loan-loss provisions generated under the IFRS 9 accounting standard, allowed the four Greek banks included in