Guarantees and Credit Derivatives

As specified in paragraph 7.2 , a 0% risk weight may be applied to a bank’s exposures to Saudi sovereign (or SAMA) where the exposure is denominated in and funded in Saudi Riyal. This treatment can be extended to portions of exposures guaranteed by the sovereign (or central bank), where the guarantee is denominated in the domestic currency and the exposure is funded in that currency. An exposure may be covered by a guarantee that is indirectly counter-guaranteed by a sovereign. Such an exposure may be treated as covered by a sovereign guarantee provided that: (1) the sovereign counter-guarantee covers all credit risk elements of the exposure; (2) both the original guarantee and the counter-guarantee meet all operational requirements for guarantees, except that the counter-guarantee need not be direct and explicit to the original exposure; and (3) SAMA is satisfied that the cover is robust and that no historical evidence suggests that the coverage of the counter-guarantee is less than effectively. 47 When hedging corporate exposures, this particular credit event is not required to be specified provided that: (1) a 100% vote is needed to amend maturity, principal, coupon, currency or seniority status of the underlying corporate exposure; and (2) the legal domicile in which the corporate exposure is governed has a well-established bankruptcy code that allows for a company to reorganize/restructure and provides for an orderly settlement of creditor claims. If these conditions are not met, then the treatment in paragraph 9.74 may be eligible. 48 This includes the Bank for International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, the European Union, the European Stability Mechanism and the European Financial Stability Facility, as well as MDBs eligible for a 0% risk weight as defined in paragraph 7.9 . 49 A prudentially regulated financial institution is defined as: a legal entity supervised by a regulator that imposes prudential requirements consistent with international norms or a legal entity (parent company or subsidiary) included in a consolidated group where any substantial legal entity in the consolidated group is supervised by a regulator that imposes prudential requirements consistent with international norms. These include, but are not limited to, prudentially regulated insurance companies, broker/dealers, thrifts and futures commission merchants, and qualifying central counterparties as defined in chapter 8 of the Credit Counterparty Risk (CCR) framework . 50 Cash-funded credit-linked notes issued by the bank against exposures in the banking book that fulfil all minimum requirements for credit derivatives are treated as cash-collateralized transactions. However, in this case the limitations regarding the protection provider as set out in paragraph 9.75 do not apply.