are better able to distinguish between banking organizations so that they can reward those that manage their risks prudently and penalize those that do not. These disclosures are required to be made at least twice a year, except qualitative disclosures providing a summary of the general risk management objectives and policies which can be made annually. Institutions are also required to create a formal policy on what will be disclosed and controls around them along with the validation and frequency of these disclosures. In general, the disclosures under Pillar 3 apply to the top consolidated level of the banking group to which the Basel II framework applies. Chronological updates September 2005 update On September 30, 2005, the four US Federal banking 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) announced their revised plans for the U.S. implementation of the Basel II accord. This delays implementation of the accord for US banks by 12 months. November 2005 update On November 15, 2005, the committee released a revised version of the Accord, incorporating changes to the calculations for market risk and the treatment of double default effects. These changes had been flagged well in advance, as part of a paper released in July 2005. July 2006 update On July 4, 2006, the committee released a comprehensive version of the Accord, incorporating the June 2004 Basel II Framework, the elements of the 1988 Accord that were not revised during the Basel II process, the 1996 Amendment to the Capital Accord to Incorporate Market Risks, and the November 2005 paper on Basel II: International Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards: A Revised Framework. No new elements have been introduced in this compilation. This version is now the current version. November 2007 update On November 1, 2007, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (U.S. Department of the Treasury) approved a final rule implementing the advanced approaches of the Basel II Capital Accord. This rule establishes regulatory and supervisory expectations for credit risk, through the Internal Ratings Based Approach (IRB), and operational risk, through the Advanced Measurement Approach (AMA), and articulates enhanced standards for the supervisory review of capital adequacy and public disclosures for the largest U.S. banks. July 2008 update On July 16, 2008 the federal banking and thrift agencies (the