The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has made good changes in its latest reform proposal but some of its rulings are still simplistic, unclear and heavy-handed, a senior banker said yesterday.Speaking at the Australian Capital Markets Forum in Sydney, Westpac chief financial officer Phil Coffey, said the proposed liquidity ratio was a blunt instrument, the countercyclical buffer proposal was unclear and asset/liability matching proposal (the net stable funding ratio) were simplistic.Coffey said: "Regulatory change is necessary and there are benefits in the form of increased confidence in the system, greater consistency and stronger balance sheets. But some of the responses are not in the best interests of market efficiency."Coffey questioned whether bodies such as the Basel Committee had got the balance right, with a lot of attention being focused on bank failings and much less on the poor performance of ratings agencies and some regulators. He said the amendments to the capital rules announced this week, which broaden the range of assets that will count as capital, were a positive move. The Basel Committee has also expanded the definition of what counts as liquid assets. And it has given banks until 2018 to comply with a new leverage ratio.Coffey said the decision to use the proposed leverage ratio as a "supplementary measure" to risk based requirements was also a good decision. He said: "We want the basic constraint to be risk based. Any measure of capital that does not take risk into consideration is fundamentally flawed.The Basel Committee wants a countercyclical buffer that will extend capital conservation "during periods of excess credit growth or other indicators deemed appropriate by supervisors for their national contexts". Coffey said this proposal was still unclear.Coffey also said there needed to be more thought given to how changes in liquidity ratios could be used. "The question is how can they be used to support a bank without triggering the problem they're looking to prevent?"