Sweden Teaches Crisis Prevention in Basel-Eclipsing Lesson

Sweden, home to Europe’s safest banks, says the key to avoiding the next financial crisis is to ignore calls for harmonized capital rules and apply individual regulatory standards to match national risks.

The Financial Supervisory Authority in Stockholm, which requires Swedish lenders to adopt more rigorous capital rules than those set by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, says industry demands to target uniform requirements don’t take into account the lessons of the most recent financial crisis.