Remarks by John C. Dugan Comptroller of the Currency Before the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation

Basel IIOffice of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC)General Information

Let me begin by thanking Andrew Hilton and CSFI for inviting me here this evening. These roundtables provide an excellent forum for the open discussion of the critical issues facing the financial sector today, and I applaud the independent thinking that the CSFI brings to these events.

Tonight I would like to discuss one of the most significant recent developments in the financial sector - the Basel II capital accord - which has certainly generated its fair share of controversy and taken quite a few years to get where we are now. In the U.S., a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking has at long last been released. Publications of the proposal will mark the final stage in our consultative process, in which comments are widely solicited, seriously evaluated, and in some cases intensely debated prior to the formulation of final implementing regulations. While this marks an important milestone, I can't help but be reminded of the famous Churchill line about this being not even the beginning of the end, but perhaps the end of the beginning. More prosaically, while much work has been done, much work remains before we have an up-and-running, fully supervised, and fully reliable Basel II risk-based capital regime.

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