WHAT ARE THE MAIN DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE REDEMPTION REGIMES?
The most fundamental idea of covered bonds is safeguarding a steady flow of payments to investors following
an issuer event of default. Once the issuer ceases to exist, the cash-flow stemming from a separate portfolio
of assets is used to cover all claims due to bondholders. The two most significant sources of risk threatening
the ability to satisfy the claims are (i) credit default risk, which potentially leads to an over-indebted cover pool
and (ii) market risk – first and foremost in the form of liquidity risk – which potentially leads to a sufficiently
large cover pool, which, however, is no longer able to satisfy claims due to illiquidity.
In the past, the rating agencies and other market participants assumed that, following issuer default, the cover
pool administrator could easily monetise the assets in the cover pool either by disposing parts of the cover
assets or in an indirect way, i.e. by bundling them into an asset-backed security (ABS) or – if applicable – by
using the refinance register. Some covered bond structures may also be able to raise new debt either in a
technically “unsecured” way or even in the form of covered bonds. In particular against the backdrop of uncertainty
regarding the functionality and the efficiency of these tools, it is particularly important that the cover
pool administrator is equipped with many options so he is free to pick the most efficient one.
In cases involving hard-bullet structures, issuers try to enhance the effectiveness of the tools by regularly
calculating pre-maturity tests or by maintaining a certain amount of liquid assets in the cover pool – a costly
exercise for issuers since liquid assets usually come with a negative carry. Soft-bullet structures that have a
limited extension period (usually one year) aim to manage the liquidity challenge at the expense of investors.
However, since the soft-bullet timeframe might still turn out to be insufficiently long, the idea of pass-through
aims to completely eliminate any refinancing risk by eliminating pressure to sell assets at the expense of a
maximum timeframe for the payment deferral.
In a nutshell, the three major redemption regimes for covered bonds work as described below:
> Hard-bullet covered bonds: payments have to be made when due according to the original schedule.
Failure to pay on the Standard Maturity Date (SMD) triggers default of the covered bonds, and the covered
bonds accelerate.
> Soft-bullet covered bonds: payments have to be made when due according to the original schedule.
Failure to pay on the SMD as a consequence of an issuer default does not trigger covered bond default. The
extension period grants more time (typically at least 12 months) to repay the covered bonds, setting a new
Final Maturity Date (FMD). Failure to pay on the FMD triggers default and acceleration of the covered bond.