Pakistan

Abstract Pakistan has the highest level of implementation among our case study countries. The impetus for converging on international standards has come from different actors over time. The adoption of Basel I adoption in the 1980s was driven by the World Bank and IMF. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the adoption of Basel II was driven first by politicians promoting the expansion of financial services, and then by banking sector regulators. Most recently, as banks have internationalized, they have championed the implementation of Basel III. Pakistan is one of the few cases where all three major actors—politicians, regulators, and major banks—are now aligned behind the implementation of the standards, leading to a high and ambitious level of implementation.