The dependency of the individual default behavior of a firm on the state of the credit cycle is widely implemented in credit portfolio models and ultimately reflected in the Basel II one-factor model determining capital requirements. Despite this, macroeconomic variables able to represent this...

Accounting standards require that financial institutions must measure default risk with respect to the full maturity of a financial instrument. This requires forecasting of future default probabilities. The forecast of future default probabilities concerns two aspects: forecasting macroeconomic...

Accounting standards require that financial institutions must measure default risk with respect to the full maturity of a financial instrument. This requires forecasting of future default probabilities. The forecast of future default probabilities concerns two aspects: forecasting macroeconomic...

Accounting standards require from financial institutions to consider and forecast multiple macroe- conomic scenarios when calculating loan loss provisions. Loan loss provisions protect a financial institutions against losses. But how to determine objectively the number of scenarios and to...

Financial institutions and rating agencies routinely monitor the discriminatory power of credit ratings so that potential weaknesses are detected early. This article presents an empirical study, that shows that the higher the level of default rates, the lower the expected discriminatory power of...

Credit ratings are expert systems which assess the likelihood of a borrower to default. The Basel Accord allows banks to base regulatory capital requirements on the default probability of a rating. Banks must prove that the employed default probabilities are valid estimates. Since in credit risk...