Legal Analysis of Prudential Regulation in Iranian Banking System

Inefficiency of banks’ checklist supervision, in face of global financial crisis especially in EU, raised prudential regulation as a new supervision tool in financial markets’ supervision, particularly banks. Because of the obligatory and legal features of these kinds of regulation, these regulations have a legal importance and functions more than economic or financial management aspects. Iranian bank system, following this global movement, has passed prudential regulation in its bank regulatory system and has developed the Iranian bank law. However, the structural and functional challenges in Iranian bank prudential regulation, has caused the efficient risk management to fail, that the root of these failures and insufficiency should be sought in the legal aspects of Iranian bank prudential regulatory system. In order to perform a critical study on operational and functional structure of prudential regulation in Iran, in an analytic and descriptive method, the directions, regulations and laws related to prudential supervision in Iranian banking law, in light of Basel Committee Standards and Islamic principles has been studied. To play the effective role of legal function of prudential regulation in Iranian banking system concluded that it is necessary to redefine the legal competence of prudential law makers, executors and supervisors in order to eliminate the conflict of law in three mentioned part of prudential regulatory system. Also, it is suggested to determine specifically the civil and disciplinary responsibilities of the prudential law-breakers and to define the sufficient punishment and controlling legal options like the revocation of bank license or to deprivation of professional competence of bank managers.