Minimum Capital Requirements for Market Risk

In order to protect the bank against basis risk, interest rate risk and forward gap risk under the simplified approach, the capital requirement for each commodity as described in [14.68] and [14.71] above will be subject to an additional capital requirement equivalent to 3% of the bank’s gross positions, long plus short, in that particular commodity. In valuing the gross positions in commodity derivatives for this purpose, banks should use the current spot price. 75 Banks need also to guard against the risk that arises when the short position falls due before the long position. Owing to a shortage of liquidity in some markets, it might be difficult to close the short position and the bank might be squeezed by the market. 76 Where a commodity is part of a forward contract (quantity of commodities to be received or to be delivered), any interest rate or foreign currency exposure from the other leg of the contract should be reported as set out in [14.3] to 14.40] and [14.53] to [14.62] . Positions which are purely stock financing (ie a physical stock has been sold forward and the cost of funding has been locked in until the date of the forward sale) may be omitted from the commodities risk calculation although they will be subject to interest rate and counterparty risk requirements. 77 Commodities can be grouped into clans, families, subgroups and individual commodities. For example, a clan might be Energy Commodities, within which Hydro-Carbons are a family with Crude Oil being a subgroup and West Texas Intermediate, Arabian Light and Brent being individual commodities. 78 For markets that have daily delivery dates, any contracts maturing within 10 days of one another may be offset. 79 For banks using other approaches to measure options risk, all options and the associated underlyings should be excluded from both the maturity ladder approach and the simplified approach. 80 If one of the legs involves receiving/paying a fixed or floating interest rate, that exposure should be slotted into the appropriate repricing maturity band in the maturity ladder covering interest rate related instruments. Treatment of Options 14.74 In recognition of the wide diversity of banks’ activities in options and the difficulties of measuring price risk for options, two alternative approaches will be permissible at the discretion of SAMA under the simplified standardised approach. (1) Those banks which solely use purchased options 81 can use the simplified approach described in [14.76] below]; (2) Those banks which also write options are expected to use the delta-plus method or scenario approach which are the intermediate approaches as set out in [14.77] to [14.86]. The more significant its trading activity is, the more the bank will be expected to use a sophisticated approach, and a bank with highly significant trading activity is expected to use the standardised approach or the internal models approach as set out in [6] to [9] or [10] to [13] .