A workshop on 'Stress Testing Techniques and Capital Planning according to Basel III' is being organised in Bahrain by the Union of Arab Banks, under the patronage of the Central Bank of Bahrain.

To be held at the Gulf Hotel between April 19 and 21, the workshop will be conducted by Lebanon's banking control commission head of risk assessment Rabih Nehme, Gulf International Bank chief financial officer Stephen Williams and Bank Audi Lebanon Group head of risk integration and analytics Antoine Meouchi, said a report in the Gulf Daily News (GDN), our sister publication.

The workshop aims to define the function and features of macro, stress tests and enable the risk management employees in banks to identify the types of stress tests at the portfolio level, and how they are applied in practice.

Identifying banks' responsibilities for internal capital planning processes and determining the level of capital that is commensurate with the overall risk profile will also be discussed.

The lectures will be accompanied by discussions on practical cases and exercises covering all the workshop themes.

According to Investopedia, stress tests are essentially balance-sheet assessments that analyse a bank's solvency by placing it under hypothetical unfavourable economic circumstances.

Whether self-imposed by a bank's internal risk management desk, or by governmental regulators, the goal is the same - to detect and eradicate weak spots. - TradeArabia News Service