Basel 3.1 readiness guide
A practitioner's guide to Basel 3.1 in the UK: what applies on 1 January 2027, what to have ready and what the PRA will look for. Free to read.
By Mark Dougherty, CPA (CAN)Risk Education · White-label training
White-label risk training
White-label risk training is a course on capital, liquidity or risk management that RiskTAE designs and teaches for a training provider or conference organiser, under that organisation’s brand and to its format. Your name is on the programme and the materials; the people at the front of the room are practitioners who have done the work in front of a regulator.
You can put Basel 3.1, the ICAAP, the ILAAP and recovery planning on your programme without building a faculty of your own, in time for rules that take effect on 1 January 2027.
20 January 2026PS1/26 final Basel 3.1 rules published
1 January 2027Basel 3.1 and the SDDT capital regime apply
Who it is for
Who commissions white-label risk training?
Training providers who want prudential risk on the programme without recruiting for it, and conference organisers who want a masterclass day beside an event. You keep the delegates and the brand on the door; we supply the course and the people who teach it.
The delegates are the people we teach in-house: directors who approve the ICAAP and the ILAAP, and the risk, finance and treasury staff who produce the numbers. We have taught worldwide, including the UK, the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.
For a single firm, in-house risk training is the closer fit, and directors have their own page at board risk training.
Courses
What courses can you put under your brand?
| Course | Built for | What it teaches, and the rules behind it |
|---|---|---|
| Basel 3.1 for UK banks and building societies | Risk, finance and capital teams; a shorter session for boards | PS1/26, in force from 1 January 2027: the revised credit and operational risk standardised approaches, the output floor from 60% in 2027 to 72.5% from 1 January 2030, and the market risk internal model approach from 1 January 2028. |
| The strong and simple regime | Small domestic deposit takers and their advisers | Eligibility, opting in by modification by consent, and the simplified capital regime in PS4/26 from 1 January 2027, including the Single Capital Buffer and the two-year ICAAP and ILAAP cycle for SDDTs other than new and growing banks. |
| The ICAAP | Its authors and the directors who approve it | Pillar 1, Pillar 2A and Pillar 2B, stress and reverse stress testing and the capital plan, against SS31/15, or SS4/25 for SDDTs from 1 January 2027. |
| The ILAAP and liquidity | Treasury, finance and risk teams | The overall liquidity adequacy rule, the LCR at a minimum of 100%, stress testing, the liquidity contingency plan tested at least annually and the management body’s approval of the ILAAP, under SS24/15 as updated in January 2026. |
| Recovery planning | Plan owners, treasurers and boards | Recovery options, indicators, recovery capacity in CET1, leverage ratio and LCR percentage points, scenario testing, the fire drill at least every three years and board approval before submission, under SS9/17 as updated in March 2026. |
The Basel 3.1 course has its own page.
Sources: Bank of England, PS1/26 Implementation of Basel 3.1: final rules, 20 January 2026; PS4/26 The Strong and Simple Framework, 20 January 2026; PRA Rulebook, ILAA Part, rules 2.1, 12.3 and 13.3, and LCR (CRR) Part, Article 4; PRA SS24/15, January 2026; PRA SS9/17, March 2026.
How it works
How does commissioning a course work?
The process is the one we use for a single firm, with your format added at the start.
- A 30-minute scoping call about the audience, what they must be able to do afterwards, and how your programme runs: slot length, house style, template, on site or online.
- A proposed course outline, session by session, showing the rule or supervisory statement each session rests on.
- Material built to your template under your brand, exercises included. Where the client provides real numbers the exercises use them; otherwise they can run on a live RisKIT model.
- Delivery by our faculty under your name, on site, online or as a mix.
Faculty and quality
Who teaches, and how is quality kept?
Every course is taught by people who have done the work in front of a regulator: former chief risk officers and heads of risk, former regulators and interim executives, and model and quant specialists, alongside professional trainers. The practice is led by Mark Dougherty, CPA (CAN), a Canadian Chartered Professional Accountant with more than 20 years in risk management who contributes risk management lectures to the University of Cambridge’s Banking Executive Programme.
Two things keep the content right. Every session is tied to a dated rule, and the outline shows which: the PRA’s 2022 consultation proposed 1 January 2025 as the start date, and the final rules of 20 January 2026 say 1 January 2027. And the same firm writes ICAAPs and ILAAPs through Risk Advisory and builds the RisKIT models, so an exercise can run on a live Basel 3.1 model.
Sources: PRA CP16/22, 30 November 2022, paragraph 1.64; PS1/26, 20 January 2026, paragraph 1.23.
Formats
How long is a course, and what changes for the delegates?
We design to the slot your programme has: a two-hour board briefing, a one-day course or a two-day workshop, on site, online or a mix. A masterclass beside a conference fits the same way.
The scoping call fixes what the delegates must be able to do afterwards, and the course is built for the people in the room. A board session on Basel 3.1 is about the questions directors should ask before they approve the first ICAAP under the new rules; a course for the capital team is about the calculations, so an analyst can explain why the risk-weighted assets moved and where the output floor bites.
Failure points
What usually goes wrong with white-label risk courses?
- The deck teaches the consultation, not the rule. The UK start date was proposed as 1 January 2025 in CP16/22, moved to 1 July 2025, then to 1 January 2026, and was fixed at 1 January 2027 in January 2025. A course built from an earlier paper is wrong before it starts.
- The room is on a different regime. Delegates from small domestic deposit takers are taught the full Basel 3.1 package when their firms apply the SDDT capital regime instead: by 13 October 2025, 56 of around 80 eligible firms had opted in. We ask who is in the room before we write a slide.
- The calculation is taught and the governance is missed: the management body must approve the ILAAP, the board must approve the recovery plan before submission, and the PRA expects a fire drill before each submission. A trainer who has never sat across from a supervisor tends to leave that out.
Sources: PRA CP16/22, paragraph 1.64; PS17/23, 12 December 2023, paragraph 1.30; PRA news release, 17 January 2025; PS20/25, 28 October 2025, paragraph 1.17; PRA Rulebook, ILAA Part, rule 13.3, and Recovery Plans Part, rule 5.2; SS9/17, March 2026, paragraph 2.72.
FAQ
Questions about white-label training
Do the delegates see RiskTAE’s name?
The course runs under your brand and to your format: your name is on the programme and the materials, and our people teach as your faculty.
Do you run public courses that would compete with ours?
No. We run no open-enrolment courses of our own. We teach in-house for single firms and, through training providers and conference organisers, under their names.
Can you teach one module inside a programme run by other faculty?
Yes. A single session inside a wider banking programme, for example a half day on the ICAAP, is built the same way as a whole course: to your format and to what the delegates must be able to do afterwards.
Do you award certificates, CPD points or a qualification?
No. We design and teach the course and make no claim to accreditation, CPD recognition or a qualification. Any recognition your delegates receive comes from your own scheme.
Insights
Further reading
Should your bank join the SDDT regime? What the strong and simple rules change from 1 January 2027
Most UK banks and building societies that meet the nine SDDT criteria, and expect to keep meeting them, should join the strong and simple regime. From 1 January 2027 an SDDT holds one Single Capital Buffer...
By Mark Dougherty, CPA (CAN) · 6 min read
What Basel 3.1 changes for UK banks on 1 January 2027
Basel 3.1, the PRA's version of the final Basel III reforms, applies to UK banks and building societies from 1 January 2027. It reworks the standardised approaches and phases in an output floor that reaches 72.5% of standardised risk-weighted assets on 1 January 2030.
By Mark Dougherty, CPA (CAN) · 7 min readNext step
Shape the programme in 30 minutes
Tell us who the audience is and what they need to be able to do afterwards, and we will propose a course outline.
Plan a training programme
Tell us who the audience is and what they need, and we will propose a course outline.
Prefer email? education@risktae.com or +44 20 3996 9599. We use these details only to reply to you: privacy notice.