Supervisory requirements and expectations for portfolio level counterparty credit risk measurement and management

Purpose – This study aims to survey supervisory requirements and expectations for counterparty credit risk (CCR). Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, a survey of CCR including the following elements has been performed. First, various concepts in CCR measurement and management, including prevalent practices, definitions and conceptual issues have been introduced. Then, various supervisory requirements and expectations with respect to CCR have been summarized. This study has multiple areas of relevance and may be extended in various ways. Risk managers, traders and regulators may find this to be a valuable reference. Directions for future research could include empirical analysis, development of a theoretical framework and a comparative analysis of systems for analyzing and regulating CCR. Findings – Some of the thoughts regarding the concept of risk will be considered and surveyed, and then how these apply to CCR will be considered. A classical dichotomy exists in the literature, the earliest exposition upon which is credited to Knight (1921), who defines uncertainty is when it is not possible to measure a probability distribution or it is unknown. This is contrasted with the situation where either the probability distribution is known, or knowable through repeated experimentation. Arguably, in economic and finance (and more broadly in the social or natural as opposed to the physical or mathematical sciences), the former is a more realistic scenario that is being contending with (e.g. a fair vs loaded die, or die with unknown number of sides.) The authors are forced to rely upon empirical data to estimate loss distributions, but this is complicated because of changing economic conditions, which invalidate forecasts that our econometric models generate. Originality/value – This is one of few studies of the CCR regulations that is so far-reaching.