Despite the fact that covered bonds in a number of countries trade well inside their sovereign debt, sovereign
risk does fundamentally impact covered bonds. In fact sovereign risk impacts covered bonds to at least some
extent in all aspects of the product. The issuer, the cover pool and pool assets, liquidity and refinancing risk
in the structure as well as ratings are all impacted by it.
> Issuers especially those with a strong domestic presence are directly impacted by a weakening sovereign.
Their business prospects deteriorate as a weaker sovereign and a weaker economic situation go hand
in hand. In addition to this, many bank treasuries hold substantial volumes of their own sovereign debt
making them directly susceptible to widening sovereign spreads.
> Cover pool assets are impacted as well. Weaker economic growth usually means higher unemployment and
thus higher NPL ratios. And if one were to spin this scenario all the way to a sovereign default, international
demand for housing would most likely collapse with all consequences for house prices and LTVs.
> With very few exceptions, covered bonds are no pass-through securities. Bullet bonds refinance granu-lar loan portfolios and there are mismatches that need to be refinanced via external liquidity. Should a
sovereign run into trouble, issuers will find it harder and harder to refinance liquidity mismatches either
via further issuance, third party liquidity lines or portfolio sales. Covered bond programmes backed by
pools that might not even have any problems credit quality wise could thus be impacted negatively.
> For rating agencies sovereigns play a major role in rating covered bonds. They for example link issuer
ratings to that of the sovereign unless an issuer has a substantial presence in other countries as well. They
factor in sovereign bond spreads into their cash flow cover pool models thus driving up OC requirements
in times of sovereign stress. And last but not least, Fitch, Moody’s and S&P all operate with sovereign
ceilings for structured finance instruments including covered bonds.
Bottom line is that sovereign risk does play too big of a factor in covered bond structures to just ignore it.
Nonetheless there are reasons why in some cases covered bonds can very well trade inside their respective
sovereign bond curves.