In: Finance
What is bank capital? Why is the reserve for loan losses not counted as part of equity capital? Does retained earnings represent cash available to the bank?
Bank capital represents the net worth of the bank and it is arrived after deducting bank's liabilities from bank's assets. Bank's Assets includes cash, investments, advances etc. Liabilities includes reserves and surplus, deposits and borrowings.
Reserve for loan losses not counted as part of equity capital as per the Basel I,"as they are created against identified losses or in respect of identified deterioration in the value of assets and also they are not freely available to meet unidentified losses that may subsequently arise elsewhere in the portfolio." Basel I specified " a limit of 1.25 percentage points of weighted risk asset" for a general loan loss provision to be admitted in Tier II capital.
Retained earnings doesn't represent cash available to bank as retained earnings are the profits that are left after paying dividends to shareholders and are available for reinvestment. Retained earnings form a part of bank's net worth or capital or surplus.