Factbox: The road ahead for Europe's new banking watchdog

The European Central Bank (ECB) is set to become the euro zone's single bank supervisor from November next year.

Until then, it wants to complete several checks on the banks it will watch over directly, appoint a supervisory board for the new institution and hire at least 1,000 staff.

Here is an overview of what will happen in the next year:

END SEPTEMBER 2013

The ECB appointed U.S. consultancy Oliver Wyman to help with the work of the Asset Quality Review (AQR) of at least 130 eurozone banks.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) will finalize draft rules for a common definition of non-performing loans (NPL) and refer the draft to national supervisors. The definition could force banks to recategorize some loans as NPLs, which would affect their capital ratios.

OCTOBER 2013

The ECB will ramp up efforts to hire at least 1,000 experts to work for the Single Supervisory Mechanism in Frankfurt, of which around 750 will be involved in supervision.

The ECB will publish a vacancy notice for the chair of the SSM supervisory board, followed by those for top management, and middle management a few weeks later.

ECB begins work on database to finalize which banks will be directly supervised.

END OF OCTOBER 2013

EBA to publish rules for NPLs.

October 28 publication of SSM legislation

NOVEMBER 2013

November 2 SSM legislation enters into force

Slovenia banking stress tests to be completed

Irish banks' balance sheet assessment to be completed and Ireland to take any capital strengthening measures required.

BY END DECEMBER 2013

Greek banking stress tests to be completed.

Bank checks begin with a risk assessment, in which broad risk factors, including funding and liquidity risk, will be identified. This is the first of three checks, which include the AQR and stress tests, which will be conducted in 2014.

Nominations for chair and vice-chair of SSM board.

FIRST QUARTER 2014

ECB aims to have basic structure of the organization for the AQR in place.

SUMMER 2014

AQR and EBA stress tests to be completed.

NOVEMBER 2014

ECB to begin supervising at least 130 banks. Another 5,900 will continue to be supervised by national authorities, but the ECB will have the power to intervene in some circumstances.

(Reporting By Laura Noonan; Editing by Will Waterman)