U.S. federal banking regulators announced that they are putting off implementation of the Basel II capital adequacy regime until 2008.

The regulators say they intend to move forward with a notice of proposed rulemaking for domestic implementation of Basel II, but plan to introduce additional prudential safeguards to address concerns identified in a quantitative impact study conducted with the industry. The regulators announced back on April 29, that they were delaying rulemaking, pending the results of the study.

The four agencies (the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Office of Thrift Supervision) expect to propose a revised implementation timeline for Basel II. Under this revised timeline, the first opportunity for a U.S. banking institution to move to the new regime would be January 2008.

The agencies expect that the U.S. Basel II proposal will be available in the first quarter of 2006. In addition, to the delayed implementation U.S. institutions adopting the Basel II-based capital rules would be subject to a minimum three-year transition period during which the agencies would apply limits on the amount by which each institution’s risk-based capital could decline with the application of Basel II. These limits would be implemented through floors that are intended to be simpler in design and more conservative in effect than those set forth in Basel II.

An institution’s primary Federal supervisor would assess that institution’s readiness to operate under the Basel II-based capital rules, and will make a decision on the termination of the floors after 2011 on an institution-by-institution basis. The regulators add that they anticipate that there will be further revisions to the U.S. Basel II-based capital rules prior to the termination of the floors.