Securities Lending Haircuts and Indemnification Pricing

Abstract

Securities borrowing and lending are critical to proper functioning of securities markets. To alleviate securities owners’ exposure to borrower default risk, overcollateralization and indemnification are provided by the borrower and the lending agent respectively. Haircuts as the level of overcollateralization and the cost of indemnification are naturally interrelated: the higher haircut is, the lower cost shall become. This article presents a method of quantifying their relationship. Borrower dependent haircuts satisfying the lender’s credit risk appetite are computed for US Treasuries and main equities by applying a repo haircut model to bilateral securities lending transactions. Indemnification is designed to fulfill a triple-A risk appetite when the transaction haircut fails to deliver. The cost of indemnification consists of a risk charge, a capital charge, and a funding charge, each corresponding to the expected loss, the economic capital, and the redundant fund needed to arrive at the triple-A haircut.

Keywords: securities lending, haircut model, borrower default indemnification, cost of indemnification

JEL Classification: G10, G11, G20, G23