Overview
An internal resolution team (IRT) is the working-level structure through which the Single Resolution Board (SRB) plans the resolution of a specific significant banking group. Each IRT is led by a coordinator from the SRB and includes staff from the national resolution authorities of the Member States in which the group operates. The IRT is the operational counterpart to the college structure: it does the continuous, detailed work of preparing a group for potential resolution.
How it works
An IRT is responsible for the full resolution-planning cycle for its assigned group. This includes drafting and updating the group resolution plan, choosing and operationalising the resolution strategy (single point of entry or multiple point of entry), carrying out the resolvability assessment, identifying and working to remove impediments to resolvability, and determining MREL for the relevant entities. The team combines the SRB's central perspective with the local knowledge and legal expertise of the national resolution authorities, which is essential where group entities are subject to different national laws.
By pooling central and national resources into a single team per group, the IRT model gives effect to the SRM's design: central responsibility for significant institutions, executed in cooperation with national authorities. The IRT interacts with the group's supervisors and, for groups with entities outside the banking union, feeds into the relevant resolution college and international crisis-management arrangements.
Legal basis
IRTs are an operational construct of the SRM rather than a body defined by a single dedicated article. Their existence follows from the SRM Regulation (Regulation 806/2014), in particular the allocation of resolution tasks to the SRB for significant institutions and the division of tasks and cooperation between the SRB and national resolution authorities. The substantive planning work the IRT performs is grounded in the BRRD and SRM Regulation provisions on resolution plans, resolvability and MREL. The precise composition and working methods are set out in SRB internal arrangements rather than in the level-1 text.
Relevance for banks and investors
For a significant group, the IRT is the team a bank engages with on resolution planning throughout the year, and whose analysis drives the group's resolution strategy and MREL calibration. For investors, the IRT's work determines where loss-absorbing instruments must be issued within the group and how a resolution would be sequenced. It is the practical engine behind the resolution plan that shapes an issuer's resolution risk.