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6 May, 2009: 

The International Organisation for Securities Commissions’ (IOSCO) Technical Committee published a report on ‘Unregulated Financial Markets and Products – Consultation Report prepared by its task force.

Thankfully, in a period when lot of commentators are spitting venom at securitization as being the source of the present crisis, the Report recognizes the significance of securitization. “The absence of a well-functioning securitisation market will impact consumers, banks, issuers and investors. The price of credit is likely to be higher for the consumer and the availability scarcer. Banks will no longer have a tool to reduce risk and diversify their financing sources”, says the Report.  Credit default swaps, too, can serve as an excellent instrument for risk hedging and price discovery, but also have a potential to proliferate as a tool of speculative trading in credit.

Thus, the interim recommendations are aimed towards restoring transparency and investors’ confidence, promoting fairness and bringing about stability in the international financial markets. The interim recommendations on securitization include:

  • The originators or the sponsors to have longer term economic interest in the securitization transaction
  • Disclosures and the transparency norms to be made stringent to ensure that appropriate checks and assessments are done and the originator, issuer and underwriters have duly performed their duties.
  • Improving disclosure norms for the issuers on initial and continuing basis, giving out data on the underlying asset pool’s performance and so on.
  • Independence of experts used by issuers

In the CDS market, the task force recommended the formation of central counterparties to handle clearing of CDS contracts and for market participants to support the clearing process by developing a standardised CDS contract. The report is open for comments till the 15th June, 2009. See the full text of the report here.

Links: See news updates on credit derivatives here

Reported by: Nidhi Bothra