Sunday, December 6th, 2009
Replacement risk arises when a bank has an obligation to one party where the discharge of that obligation is conditional on a third party meeting its obligation to the bank. For example, the bank may have sold stock to the first party. It intends to deliver this stock using stock it has bought but not yet received from a third party. If the third party fails to deliver its stock the bank will have to buy it from the market at a potentially higher price.
The most common primary cause of bank failures is insolvency arising from credit losses. This is followed by failure to manage interest rate risk and foreign exchange risk. Failures arising from fraud, market risk and liquidity risk tend to hit the headlines but are far less common than those due to these first two factors.
Tags: banking, debt, mortgage, Replacement risk, risk, stocks, taxes
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Friday, November 20th, 2009
Insurance companies sell policies that pay out in the event of death or disability. The premiums charged on these policies are based on actuarial assumptions about factors such as mortality rates. If those assumptions prove to be incorrect such policies may be loss making.
Tags: Actuarial risk, banking, credits, insurance, loans, mortgage
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Thursday, November 12th, 2009
A US bank with operations in a foreign country is, for example, at risk from the imposition of capital controls preventing it from remitting any profits or other funds it has in that country. In extreme cases foreign banks may even have their assets appropriated.
Tags: assets, banking, banks, Country risk, loans, risk
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