On July 8, Moody’s followed up on its June 11 announcement regarding risk related to a “bail-in” regime in Canada with an announcement of the change to “outlook negative” in Global Credit Research. Additionally, Moody’s notes that “high household indebtedness and elevated housing prices remain key risks to banking system stability in Canada”. Further, Moody’s states that “growth sought by the banks has led them to diversify into riskier businesses and geographies which dilute their strong domestic credit profiles and represent a growing risk to the Canadian system’s stability”.
Monthly Archives: July 2014
EBA report on favorable capital treatment
On July 1, 2014, the European Banking Authority published a favorable opinion on the preferential capital treatment of covered bonds. The EBA also delivered a companion report entitled EBA Report on EU Covered Bond Frameworks and Capital Treatment. See also the press release from the EBA. The EBA concluded that the favorable capital treatment under the capital requirements regulation (CRR) for bank investments in covered bonds was appropriate, but called for some “further qualifying criteria for their preferential treatment.” The EBA recommended against the use of aircraft liens, residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS) and commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) as cover pool assets after December 2017. The opinion and the report were delivered to the European Commission in response to a request for advice.
With respect to favorable capital treatment the EBA said:
“Due to the good historical default/loss performance of covered bonds in the EU, the dual recourse principle embedded in covered bond frameworks whereby the covered bond holder has a claim on the issuing institution and a priority claim on the cover assets, the special public supervision for the protection of the bondholders mandated by the UCITS Directive and the existence of qualifying criteria in Article 129 of the CRR, the EBA considers the preferential risk weight treatment laid down in Article 129 of the CRR to be, in principle, an appropriate prudential treatment. “
Treasury trying to encourage private funding
Speaking in Washington on June 26 before the Making Homes Affordable Five Year Anniversary Summit, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Jacob Lew, gave a speech in which he addressed the need for housing finance reform. He also noted almost a complete absence of a private label securities market almost six years after the crisis and a need to restore private funding to the residential mortgage market. He noted that a series of questions was posted to the Treasury website seeking comment by August 8, 2014 on recommendations for reviving the private label securities market.
Neither Secretary Lew’s speech nor the posted questions mention covered bonds. Clearly covered bond legislation for the United States should be considered by the Treasury. The legislation introduced in 2011 by Representative Garrett, H.R. 940, passed the House Financial Services Committee by a very strong bi-partisan vote of 44-7. Passage of covered bond legislation should be easily achievable with Treasury backing and covered bonds could provide an important channel of private funding for the mortgage market. After all, covered bonds provide funding for about €3 trillion in the European market and the domestic U.S. market for covered bonds issued by foreign has shown healthy growth.