Skip to main content

G. Regulatory Retail Portfolios

C 52/2017 STA Effective from 1/12/2022

21.A 75% risk weighting may apply for exposures classified as “Retail” except as provided below for past due loans as per section III J below. For an exposure to be classified as “Retail” the Central Bank will need to be satisfied that the four criteria listed below are met:

  1. (i)Orientation criterion – Exposure to a natural person or persons, or Small- and Medium-sized Entities (SME);
  2. (ii)Product criterion – Eligible products included are credit cards, revolving credit, personal lending and small business credit facilities. Residential mortgage products are excluded as these are treated separately as “Claims Secured by Residential Property” as per section H below;
  3. (iii)Granularity criterion – No exposure to any one counterparty can exceed 0.20% of the total regulatory retail portfolio being evaluated (exposure is gross before any credit risk mitigation; and one counterparty includes connected persons);
  4. (iv)Value criterion –
    1. (i)Maximum aggregated exposure to one counterparty must not exceed the value of AED 4,000,000 for exposures to SME,
    2. (ii)For all other exposures, the maximum aggregated exposure to one counterparty must not exceed the value of AED 2,000,000.

22.The Central Bank reserves the right to increase the 75% risk weight if this risk weight value is deemed to be too low based on the default experience for these types of exposures in the UAE. Exposures to SMEs that do not meet all of the above criteria set out in paragraph 21 are treated as under the corporate asset class and must follow the rules for claims on corporates as per Section III F above.