Fitch Exposure Draft: Modeling Basis Risk in U.S. Structured Finance Transactions.NEW YORK -- Fitch Ratings has introduced new model-based stress criteria for securitizations involving USD USDIn currencies, this is the abbreviation for the U.S. Dollar. Notes: The currency market, also known as the Foreign Exchange market, is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average volume of over US $1 trillion. London Interbank Offered Rate London Interbank Offered Rate A short-term interest rate often quoted as a 1,3,6-month rate for U.S.dollars. (LIBOR LIBOR See: London Interbank Offered Rate LIBOR See London interbank offered rate (LIBOR). ) to better capture potential effects of basis risk, which securitizations can be vulnerable to in both rising and falling interest rate environments, according to Quantitative Financial Research (QFR QFR Quick File Rename QFR Quality Financial Reporting QFR Quantitative Financial Research QFR Question for the Record QFR Quality Fitness Review QFR Quarterly Force Revision ) Managing Director and PhD Ahmet Kocagil. 'While some securitization structures use swaps to mitigate basis risk exposure, falling interest rates may increase compression between assets and liabilities, which may diminish excess spread and potentially lead to a liquidity shortage,' said Kocagil. 'Additionally, pay fixed-receive floating swaps can also result in an over-reliance on swap cash flows in a rising rate scenario, making it more difficult to isolate the transaction's own liquidity risk.' Fitch's criteria changes stand to most greatly affect consumer ABS and RMBS RMBS Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities RMBS Rambus, Inc. (NASDAQ stock symbol) RMBS Russian Mortgage-Backed Securities , according to Managing Director Claire Mezzanotte. 'The majority of U.S. consumer ABS transactions, including credit card receivables, student loans, and home equities, are exposed to basis risk due to mismatches between the asset and liability coupon rates,' said Mezzanotte. Fitch has been publishing vectors of shifts to spot LIBOR for each rating level since formally rolling out its interest rate stress criteria report for transactions involving USD LIBOR in May of this year. Once the basis risk criteria is finalized, Fitch will be updating the stresses each month. 'The major advantage of the new methodology is that the basis risk assumptions are applied uniformly over different securitized products based on past occurrences and future projections of market interest rate dynamics,' said Kocagil. Fitch will be soliciting market feedback on this exposure draft for one month before releasing its final criteria. 'Basis Risk In Structured Finance Transactions: T-Bill, CP, and Prime versus USD LIBOR' is available on the Fitch Ratings web site at www.fitchratings.com. Fitch's rating definitions and the terms of use Terms of Use are rules set up by the owner of an intellectual property or service to govern how they may be legally used. In many cases, terms of service are used as a contractual agreement between a company and users of a service they provide. of such ratings are available on the agency's public site, www.fitchratings.com. Published ratings, criteria and methodologies are available from this site, at all times. Fitch's code of conduct, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, affiliate firewall, compliance and other relevant policies and procedures Policies and Procedures are a set of documents that describe an organization's policies for operation and the procedures necessary to fulfill the policies. They are often initiated because of some external requirement, such as environmental compliance or other governmental are also available from the 'Code of Conduct' section of this site. |
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