LONDON - Any delay in reaching final agreement on the Basel II accord upgrade of international rules for bank safety would threaten the already tight timetable for bringing the European version into law, the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) said in January.

LONDON - Islamic financial experts need to do further work on the implications for Islamic banking of the risk-focused Basel II upgrade of international rules for bank safety, Malaysian central bank governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz said in mid-January.

HONOLULU - Risk management software provider Kamakura Corporation launched in January the Kamakura Risk Information Services (KRIS) Private Firm Model, a web-based browser that estimates the default probabilities of privately held firms.

WASHINGTON - The Institute of International Finance (IIF) has appointed David Schraa as director of its banking and regulatory department.

BASEL - The International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) has released a compilation of existing documents on corporate governance requirements for insurers.

PARIS - Financial software firm FRS said BNP Paribas Investment Banking has selected the FRS FinancialAnalytics package for integrated regulatory reporting across the bank\'s European branch network.

NEW YORK - Credit risk software provider CreditVantage in January launched the CRS corporate probability of default (PD) model which will be supplied in initially in North America with other areas to be added during the course of 2004.

LONDON - Credit risk software provider CreditVantage launched in January its European Loan Loss Database, an interbank database containing loan data from 1,100 borrowers in European countries.

The Basel regulators have put forward their ideas for dealing with a problem that\'s crucial for banks using advanced op risk approaches. But there\'s no end in sight

The group allocation paper outlines the following principles for the home-host recognition of AMA operational risk capital