William (Bill) Coen

William (Bill) Coen is a regulatory expert who served as the Secretary General of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) from 2014 to 2019. Since completing his role as Secretary General at the BCBS, Bill has taken on a number of different roles, including Chairman of the International Financial Reporting Standards Advisory Council, Chief Regulatory Adviser at Suade Labs, and Vice Chair at Reference Point. He is also a Member of the Bretton Woods Committee, a Member of the Board of Directors of the Toronto Centre, and a Visiting Scholar at the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C. Bill has over 35 years of experience in financial services and financial regulation.
== Education ==
A native New Yorker, Bill completed his Bachelor of Science at Manhattan College in 1984. In 1991, Bill was awarded a Master of Business Administration in Accounting and Finance by the Graduate School of Business Administration at Fordham University.
== Career ==
Bill began his career in banking and finance at a New York bank, where he worked as Assistant Vice President in consumer credit and retail mortgage lending. Following his role in industry, Bill joined the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in 1991 where he began his career in regulation as a bank examiner. In 1993, he started working for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington D.C. where he was involved in a range of projects concerning banking policy, supervision, and licensing.
In 1999, Bill moved to Basel in Switzerland to begin his long career at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) as a Member of the Secretariat of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. From 2003 to 2006, Bill served as Content Manager for the BIS’s FSI Connect, a web-based content platform. From 2007 until 2014, Bill served as Deputy Secretary General of the BCBS before being appointed as its Secretary General in 2014, a role in which he served until June 2019.
Bill is widely credited as being a key driver behind Basel III, the BCBS’s reform package following the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Bill’s work on Basel III began during his time as Deputy Secretary General. In this role, he led on the Committee’s response to the crisis and coordinated its work on various Basel III policy initiatives. When he took on the role of Secretary General, Bill also served as the Chairman of the Committee’s Policy Development Group (PDG), the Committee’s Task Force on Corporate Governance, and the Committee’s Coherence and Calibration Task Force.
As Chair of the PDG, Bill oversaw the development of the Basel III standards. Basel III is the BCBS’s post-crisis reform of global prudential standards. Basel III strengthened banks’ capital ratios and introduced new capital buffers, liquidity standards, and a leverage ratio. In an interview with Forbes in 2018, Bill discussed the role of the financial crisis in triggering the reforms of Basel III: “The global financial crisis (GFC) was an important motivating factor. It laid bare deficiencies in global bank regulations as well as corporate governance practices, accounting and audit standards, and rating agency practices.”
The Basel III post-crisis reforms are implemented by most countries around the world following a rigorous development process in the BCBS based on consensus among the 27 members that make up the Committee. To ensure the standards are implemented, the BCBS introduced a formal review programme following the GFC under Bill’s guidance. The programme engages directly with countries to review ongoing progress in implementing the standards and publishes the results. In an interview with the Bank for International Settlements, Bill highlighted how this serves as a strong incentive for countries to achieve consistency with the global Basel III standards.
Since his departure from the BCBS, Bill’s work on Basel III and related standards continues to shape the global regulatory sphere. In December 2017, ‘Basel III: Finalising post-crisis reforms’ was published and continues to be implemented by countries around the world. The fundamental review of the trading book (FRTB) and associated market risk reforms are another set of standards whose development Bill led on during his time at the BCBS. In a 2018 speech at the Annual General Meeting of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Bill highlighted how the Committee’s market risk standards were finally in a stable shape following major improvements since the global financial crisis and work that had been 25 years in the making. As of 2021, a number of countries are in the process of fully implementing the Basel Committee’s market risk standards.
Since leaving his role as Secretary General of the BCBS, Bill continues to contribute to the development of global financial regulation through different roles in the public and private sectors. As Chair of the IFRS Advisory Council, Bill leads on global accounting standards, whilst he contributes to the consulting and regulatory technology (RegTech) sectors through roles at Reference Point and Suade Labs respectively. He continues to share his expertise through his leadership role at the Toronto Centre, and his roles at the Bretton Woods Committee and the International Monetary Fund, among others.
== Publications and Speaking Engagements ==
Bill has a number of regular speaking engagements where he shares his regulatory expertise, including with the Toronto Centre on such topics as ‘Expectations of Supervised Banks’ following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bill has also been involved in a range of publications. In 2021, he co-edited a book entitled ‘Regtech, Suptech and Beyond: Innovation and Technology in Financial Services’ with Diane Maurice. The book includes contributions from the RegTech and SupTech sectors, financial institutions, central banks and regulators, and academic experts among others. The contributions discuss developments in RegTech and SupTech and the future of digital technology in financial supervision.
Other publications include, among others, articles in the Financial Times on the role of bank capital regulation in SME lending and Green Finance, an interview with Central Banking, and a book chapter on ‘Finalising Basel III’ in a book entitled ‘Basel III: Are We Done Now?’ published by De Gruyter.
Category:American people
Category:Fordham University alumni