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By Bloomberg

Banks are set to face tougher international rules on the capital they must have on hand to cope with an increase in interest rates, amid regulators’ concerns that current standards may be too flimsy to fully capture the risks.

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, a group bringing together regulators such as the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, set out options on June 8 for overhauling how central banks and other regulators police whether banks are ready for a change in rates. The measures under review concern the losses that might arise on bonds and other assets that the bank plans to hold to maturity.

The work “is particularly important in the light of the current exceptionally low interest-rate environment in many jurisdictions,” the Basel committee said in a statement on its website. The committee is seeking to ensure that “banks have appropriate capital to cover potential losses from exposures to changes in interest rates.”

Global central banks have pushed interest rates to historic lows in a bid to counter the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The ECB, as well as monetary policy chiefs in Denmark and Switzerland, are among those to have pushed some rates below zero in a bid to spur bank lending and stimulate economic growth.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said last month that she expects to raise interest rates this year if the economy meets her forecasts, with a gradual pace of tightening to follow.