Abstract. In the actual study, starting from the international experience, we revealed the role that should be taken by the Assets and Liabilities Committee (ALCO) within the Romanian commercial banks. ALCO became one of the tools used by the executive management of the banks to take decisions regarding the future policy of assets and liabilities management, relying on the synthetic information prepared by well trained technicians but without voting right (usually middle management staff). We consider that the implementation of an assets and liabilities management strategy cannot be done without an appropriate corporate governance structure, even though the bank is having highly specialized staff. Models of some western banking institutions may be considered as benchmarks by the Romanian banks.

Keywords: Assets and Liabilities Committee (ALCO), optimization, gap, corporate governance.