PrefBlog

Chapter 4 of the IMF Global Financial Stability Report is a fascinating review of longevity risk:

Private pension providers and governments are particularly exposed to longevity risk and this risk is greatly increased in the current low-interest-rate environment. In line with other estimates in the literature, the analysis in this chapter finds that the liabilities of U.S. pension plans would rise by 9 percent for a three-year increase in longevity. Governments may be even more exposed: many not only sponsor defined benefit pension plans for their employees, but maintain extensive old-age social security systems covering most of the population. In addition, the government is likely liable for the “tail” of longevity risk: in the case of a longevity shock affecting the entire population, the private sector would likely be overwhelmed by the financial consequences. In that case, the losses are likely to be assumed by the government in some way, including through pension fund guarantee schemes that take on the pension liabilities of failing institutions and social security schemes that aim to prevent old age poverty.

However, the section that attracted press attention was Chapter 2: Sovereigns, Banks, and Emerging Ma rkets: Detailed Analysis and Policies:

Looking ahead, many European banks have announced medium-term business plans with reductions in assets amounting to about $2.0 trillion in total.
…
The variations in the scale of bank deleveraging across scenarios are mainly driven by differences in the extent of cyclical pressures. Under the complete policies scenario – where cyclical pressures ease – assets are cut back by $2.2 trillion, mostly reflecting banks’ own business plans. By contrast, in the weak policies scenario – where cyclical pressures are stronger – banks reduce assets by $3.8 trillion (Figure 2.27). As cyclical pressures intensify, the impact on EU credit rises disproportionately. This is because with stronger cyclical headwinds, more banks need to work their way further down the deleveraging pecking order when reducing their balance sheets, and so EU and domestic credit is curtailed more.

It was an unexciting day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualPremiums off 1bp, FixedResets flat and DeemedRetractibles down 5bp. A bright spot was the floating rate sector, which again scored a lock-out on the positive side of the Performance Highlights table. Volume was slightly below average.

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 5.18%, equivalent to 6.73% interest at the standard equivalency factor of 1.3x. Long corporates now yield about 4.5% so the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread (in this context, the “Seniority Spread”) is now about 225bp, a marked widening from the 215bp reported April 13.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 at 10:34 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.