Gli stress test bancari. Inquadramento e regolazione

Among the numerous economic-legal institutes affecting financial institutions, the use of stress tests as a regulatory tool deserves attention due to its novelty and its application potential. The integration of banking regulation in matters of state aid and resolution was conditioned by the exercise of the tests; after all, a well-known case study starts from the trials marking paradigmatic events of bank capitalization (public and private). The significance of the stress tests therefore concerns both the application of public bank capitalization processes and those of endogenous (re-)capitalization. But it does not stop at these aspects. Having included geographical restrictions, activity restrictions, capital requirements and risk management rules, banking regulation has introduced yet another type of supervision: regulation by hypothesis. The novelty of this approach lies in the fact that the hypothetical analysis is requested and managed by supervisory authorities and can be translated into regulatory responses of a different nature. The relevant passage concerns the institutionalization process of the hypothetical regime, which, from an internal aspect of the management of the banking company, becomes a method of regulating supervision through the use of stress tests; this use must be considered referable both to the banks and to the systemic analysis of the regulatory authorities. The examination that follows concerns the different aspects of the framework of an ultimately new institution, of its regulation and, therefore, of the separation between the production of information, to which the tests are oriented, and their disclosure.