Assiduous Readers will remember that in the post Bank Regulation: The Assets to Capital Multiple, I performed some very rough calculations for Royal Bank and got a somewhat surprising result – a figure in excess of the OSFI standard limit.
These Assiduous Readers will also remember that I got put in my place pretty smartly by the Royal Bank Investor Relations Department:
Thank you for your question about our assets to capital multiple (ACM). In keeping with prior quarter-end practice, we did not disclose our ACM in Q1/08 but were well within the OSFI minimum requirement. Our ACM is disclosed on a quarterly basis (with a 6-7 week lag) on OSFI’s website. We understand this should be available over the next few days. Below is an excerpt from the OSFI guidelines outlining the calculation of the ACM. We hope this helps.
I hadn’t been aware that OSFI reported data … but they do! There is an excellent bank data resource page on the site that I found through the banks section of the sitemap.
According to OSFI, the assets-to-capital multiple for Royal Bank as of Q4-2007 was 19.94. It’s a good thing nobody sneezed at the time, or they would have been over-limit! I am all agog for the Q1-2008 data to be published so I can determine what Royal Bank’s standards for “well within the OSFI minimum requirement” mean. In the meantime, I have added a link to the reporting page to the blogroll, under the heading “Online Resources”.