After over two centuries of life and use in the European debt markets, the concept of a covered bond market is being widely evaluated by other markets. This is driven by a number of factors including the limited availability of long-term unsecured funding, the increased long-term liquidity requirements to come from Basel III rules, increased swap costs for prepayable securities and changes in investors’ appetite for traditional asset-backed securitization products, and the returns required to compensate for holding them.