Top banks told to centralize risk data by 2016

The world's top banks have three years to build up a single picture of all their risks to help make the wider financial system safer, global regulators said on Wednesday.

"The financial crisis that began in 2007 revealed that many banks, including globally systemically important banks (G-SIBs), were unable to aggregate risk exposures and identify concentrations fully, quickly and accurately," the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision said in a statement.

G-SIBs refers to the world's top 28 banks like Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley which are required to undergo closer scrutiny and hold extra capital from 2016.

Such banks operate globally with many branches and subsidiaries, making it harder and costlier to have a single snapshot of risks.

The Basel Committee, which groups regulators and central bankers from 27 financial centers, set out principles these banks must implement in full by January 2016 to strengthen their aggregation of data on risks.

"These principles are a significant step towards improving banks' risk management capabilities and they will also contribute to G-SIBs' resolvability, hence reducing the potential recourse to taxpayers," Basel Committee chairman Stefan Ingves said.

(Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Mark Potter)