Covered Bonds

An abundance of cheap central bank funding has negated the need to issue short dated covered bonds but access to competitive funding at the long end would provide a compelling reason for issuers to return to the primary market, said bankers on Monday. A seven year transaction mandated by Hypo Noe on Monday is likely to provide a test of investor appetite.

HSBC Canada issued the most oversubscribed dollar-denominated Canadian covered bond in years on Thursday, and still managed to price 28bp tighter than the Canadian heavyweights.

NN Bank has announced plans to set up a soft bullet covered bond programme, which is likely to result in a considerable saving in the cost of funding relative to its existing conditional pass three (CPT) programme and enable it to access long term funding with maturities beyond 10 years which, until now, are tenors that have not been available.

Mortgages in covered bond pools that fall 90 days past due typically then become ineligible for inclusion and are replaced. But, the unprecedented volume of mortgage moratorium initiatives and other forbearance measures introduced in response to the coronavirus pandemic means the market must now offer a degree of latitude, which it is planning to do with the launch of new transparency measures.

Estonia’s LHV Pank is set to become the second bank in the country to take advantage of the country’s covered bond law and, having set up a programme and gained central bank authority to issue, Moody’s this week assigned a rating to its programme.

The Danish covered bond market is expected to maintain its exemplary performance with smooth execution likely in the quarterly auctions due to commence next week, a local banker told GlobalCapital on Wednesday.

Martin McKinney, senior manager of medium-term funding at Santander UK, speaks to GlobalCapital about the impact the UK’s lockdown on the bank’s balance sheet, central bank liquidity, and the bank’s changing mix of regulatory and pure funding.

HSBC Canada is set to become the third Canadian bank to issue a dollar covered bond this year, mandating leads for a three year transaction on Tuesday. Given a strong secondary market performance, HSBC Canada should be able to price its deal a lot tighter than its predecessors.

A strong and growing deposit base, an active private placement market and sizeable proportion of prefunding has put the Pfandbrief banks in a strong liquidity position, the chief executive officer of the Association of German Pfandbrief Banks (VDP), Jens Tolckmitt, told GlobalCapital in an interview on Tuesday covering a wide range of other topics such as real estate values, the mortgage lending value and Basel III’s output floor.

The prospect of switching out of Pfandbriefe exposed to a high proportion of foreign commercial real estate and into higher-yielding, and more liquid, Scandinavian covered bonds exposed to domestic loan portfolios that are less affected by the coronavirus, is a tempting choice. But the protection Pfandbriefe offer investors and the scarce supply outlook means spreads on the product will remain supported, said bankers on Monday.

Lloyds Bank has got most of its covered bond and senior funding out of the way already this year — ideal, given the threat of the coronavirus pandemic to both bond markets and the wider economy. But the bank has also been busy optimising its capital stack, which should support its lending just when it is most needed.

Caffil’s debut Covid-19 bond issued this week has shown that the moribund public sector covered bond market can play a crucial role in financing the response to the coronavirus crisis. The deal implies that the hitherto dormant public sector programmes many issuers have set up across Europe have scope to be reactivated to provide stable long-term financing for debt-ridden regional borrowers.