The above framework is intended to set out a consistent approach for incorporating backtesting into the internal models approach to market risk capital requirements. The goals of this effort have been to build appropriate and necessary incentives into a framework that relies heavily on the efforts of banks themselves to calculate the risks they face, to do so in a way that respects the inherent limitations of the available tools, and to keep the burdens and costs of the imposed procedures to a minimum.

The Basle Committee believes that the framework described above strikes the right balance in this regard. Perhaps more importantly, however, the Committee believes that this approach represents the first, and therefore critical, step toward a tighter integration of supervisory guidelines with verifiable measures of bank performance.