The COVID outbreak led to widespread and rapid credit deterioration across multiple sectors; the subsequent recovery has been slower but has reversed much of the decline as economies have re-opened. But with war, supply shocks, inflation and rising rates, the improvement across multiple sectors has stalled and a growing number of them are turning down again.
Many credit portfolio managers expect default rates – currently around 2% – to be sharply higher in 2023, but the scale of the increase is still a major unknown. A useful metric to anticipate rising defaults is credit volatility – if this trends higher, credit category transition rates will increase, including transitions into default.
Inflation dominated Q3 financial news, and the resulting short rate squeeze is biting while credit volatility is rising and the COVID recovery is running out of steam. Risk indicators are high in the UK, and oil and gas price volatility has brought havoc to Europe. In North America, weaker credit trends are appearing in several sectors. Believe it or not, there are some bright spots amidst this turmoil. This whitepaper elaborates on some of these trends and shows where credit could be headed next.
The Business Development Company sector in the US has grown steadily over the past 20 years. While BDCs allow retail investors to gain liquid exposure to portfolios of private companies, their historically high returns have been dented recently by some steep falls in valuations and – in some cases – discounts to net asset values.
In the newly published special report from Structured Credit Investor (SCI), Mark Faulkner, co-founder, Credit Benchmark, investigates how Credit Consensus data can help support growth in SRT activity.
The recent award of the 2022 Nobel memorial prize in Economics to Bernanke, Diamond and Dybvig for their work on banking regulation and liquidity highlights the connection between credit and liquidity, making the point that credit assessments are a form of market information.
Modern Slavery, Child Labor and Human Trafficking Statement Credit Benchmark believes that human rights are an absolute and universal standard, and everyone has a basic
The Basic Materials Industry includes Chemicals, Metals, Mining, Forestry and Paper. Output prices for these sectors have been very volatile in the past 12 months, reflecting recent rapid structural changes in the global economy. However, US Basic Materials has shown a recent turning point.
As pandemic-related spending continues to fall, the US Health Care sector is beginning to show credit deterioration.
European Governments are pledging hundreds of billions of Euros in financial aid to power generators and distributors, plus support for consumers facing massive energy price hikes. But an even larger crisis may be lurking in European energy trading, with the FT reporting sector margin requirements as high as €1trillion – vastly in excess of current sector liquidity.
Credit Benchmark brings together internal credit risk views from over 40 leading global financial institutions. The contributions are anonymized, aggregated, and published in the form of consensus ratings and aggregate analytics to provide an independent, real-world perspective of credit risk. Risk and investment professionals at banks, insurance companies, asset managers and other financial firms use the data for insights into the unrated, monitoring and alerting within their portfolios, benchmarking, assessing and analyzing trends, and fulfilling regulatory requirements and capital.
Please complete the form below to arrange a demo.
