Covered Bond Market Today

How has the covered bond market performed in the last 20 years?

Overall, the market shrank from 2012 to 2017 before resuming its growth path in 2018. In the period from 2004-2012, the covered bond market grew by 1.3 trillion euros. The reason is because housing markets grew rapidly in many countries. Spain alone contributed over 300bn of total market growth along with other established countries such as France, Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark contributing a further 700bn Euros.

However, it has shrunk since 2012 due to: banks in general are borrowing far less as their balance sheets shrink and covered bonds have been squeezed by two other sources of wholesale funding.

What are the features of covered bonds? (types)

1. Big Deals
   • Jumbo covered bonds - £1bn or larger
   • Benchmark deals are those between £500mn and £1bn - representing 17% of the total market
   • Smaller bonds for less than £500mn - these represent another 9% of the market
   • The rest of the market consists of private placements - representing nearly 33%
2. Fixed Rate - Almost all covered bond investors only ever buy fixed-rate bonds. However, over 500bn is in the floating rate format
3. Euro Dominated – The covered bond market is generally dominated by the Euro. However, other currencies such as the Danish and Swedish Krone combined represent 21% of the overall market. Also, there has been growth in the Australian and Canadian Dollar investor base.

What does the covered bond market fund?

• 88% of the covered bond market funds mortgages
• 11% of issuance funds public sector bonds
• 1% is the portion of all covered bonds funding ships and aircraft

How many issuers are there, and where do they come from?

According to an estimate from the Covered Bond Council, there are 325 active covered bond issuers in the world – 78 active covered bond issuers are from Germany, 27 from Austria and at one point in Spain, 68 issuers.