On September 24, 2012, the federal banking agencies released the “Regulatory Capital Estimation Tool,” intended to help community banking and thrift organizations estimate the overall impact on their capital levels of the proposed revisions to the U.S. regulatory capital rules that were published this past summer.

The tool will serve at least two purposes. The resulting estimates should provide a new source of quantitative information for a bank’s capital planning. They should also spur an assessment of the impact of the proposed rules and how the bank might provide a meaningful comment on the proposed rules. The comment period expires three weeks from today, on October 22, 2012. The tool involves two of the three regulatory capital rules that the agencies proposed in June 2012: the Basel III Proposal, which addresses capital components and capital ratios, and the Standardized Approach Proposal, which sets forth risk weights for different asset classes.