MANILA, Philippines - Banks will now be required to submit electronic copies of their capital adequacy ratio (CAR) reports to facilitate faster release of official data, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said.
Under Memorandum Circular 2012-049, BSP laid out the rules for the electronic submission of quarterly CAR summary reports beginning with those that shall cover data for the third quarter.
CAR is a bank’s qualifying capital relative to its risk-weighted assets and is used to measure its financial strength.
“This is to expedite the receipt and processing of individual bank CAR reports so as to accelerate the availability of the consolidated industry report,” BSP Deputy Governor Nestor Espenilla Jr. said in a text message.
Currently, official, CAR data have a lag period of three quarters. Latest figures showed Philippine banks average CAR increased to 16.65 percent on a solo basis and 17.64 percent on a consolidated basis in 2011.
Both figures are above the eight percent international requirement and BSP’s 10-percent mandate. Solo basis indicates CAR of parent companies, while consolidated basis include banks’ subsidiaries and affiliates.
Under the memorandum, summary data on CAR solo basis should be submitted “within 15 banking days after the end of the reference quarter,” while those on consolidated basis must be passed 30 days after.
Summary report templates are available at the BSP website, it said. Electronic copies will be sent through the following e-mail addresses: sdckb-car574@bsp.gov.ph for universal and commercial banks; sdctb-car574@bsp.gov.ph for thrift banks; and sdcrb-car574@bsp.gov.ph for rural banks.
BSP said hard copies of CAR reports will still have to be forwarded.
“It is understood that the information contained in the CAR summary reports forwarded to the BSP-SDC (Supervisory Data Center) have already been checked for consistency against the CAR reports,” the memorandum stated.