Covered Bonds

Caffil this week issued the first Covid-19 covered bond, securing vital funding for French hospitals to fight the pandemic. The deal emerged just as public sector borrowers, such as the German Laender, face mounting funding needs to cope with the pandemic, sparking debate over whether the hitherto moribund public sector Pfandbrief market could provide a vital source of cash, writes Bill Thornhill.

Swiss franc bond spreads have failed to tighten as much as they have in the euro market, and the lack of price action meant few issuers ventured out this week. A trio of domestic deals comprised the only new supply.

Recently issued Canadian covered bonds have posted among the strongest performances in the covered bond market and still look cheap relative to Nordic deals, said traders on Wednesday. Based on Markit’s iBoxx covered bond indices, a range of other markets, such as Australia and the UK, also look very cheap, but offers are much harder to find.

A €1bn five year covered bond issued on Tuesday by Caffil, that was designed to provide funding for French hospitals in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, has demonstrated that the market for public sector covered bonds, which has been in decline for more than a decade, could now be reinvigorated. Higher local authority spending could well find its way into the cover pools of French and German covered bond issuers, the head of treasury and financial markets at SFIL, Caffil's parent organisation, said on Wednesday.

Caisse Française de Financement Local (Caffil) has launched the first negative yielding covered bond since the onset of the coronavirus crisis in Europe, after linking the use of proceeds from the deal to fighting against the effects of the pandemic.

Five years after issuing its first green Pfandbrief, Berlin Hyp (BHH) issued its first two green private placements, just before publishing it annual green bonds report on Monday. But Pfandbrief benchmark supply hopes seem distant as spreads to German Laender are prohibitively tight.

The European Mortgage Federation and European Covered Bond Council has introduced new features to its harmonised transparency template (HTT) and, at the same time, its Covid-19 task force has published the first monitoring report that contains a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of all national and international policy responses.

Bluestep Bank has issued its first covered bond and the first Swedish transaction secured on mortgages that are not prime. The deal offered a juicy pick-up to prime benchmarks, but still provided a competitive and diversified source of funding.

Caisse de Refinancement de l’Habitat (CRH) issued the first big seven year covered bond since February on Thursday, attracting extraordinary demand and pricing in line with where recently issued French five year deals were trading. It sent a bullish signal to the market and came after a long series of French financial institution bonds that have highlighted just how practical and market-orientated the country’s banking sector has become.

Some bank treasury teams are weighing up whether to access the primary market ahead of first quarter results, with bankers suggesting they could take advantage of growing demand amid falling supply.

Mortgage payment holidays and falling residential and commercial real estate prices will likely lead to a deterioration in the credit quality of the collateral pools securing covered bonds. But those programmes have other protective measures that will keep investors well insulated. And, if they need more protection, issuers can easily assuage their and rating agency concerns by adding collateral.

Canadian banks should be applauded for funding themselves in public with deals bought by real investors in a range of currencies at actual market clearing levels — astonishing though that may be for the many entitled European issuers that have shamelessly become accustomed to central bank funding.