Exposure - VM CSA Provision

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2016 ISDA Credit Support Annex (VM) (English law)
A Jolly Contrarian owner’s manual™

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Paragraph Exposure in a Nutshell™

Use at your own risk, campers!
A party’s “Exposure” means the amount it would pay (a positive Exposure) or receive (a negative Exposure) if all Covered Transactions other than this Credit Support Annex were terminated as at the Valuation Time following a Termination Event where the other party was the One Affected Party, the Base Currency was the Termination Currency and the Valuation Agent made the valuations on the party’s behalf using mid-market estimates of the amounts that would be required under the ISDA Master Agreement.

Full text of Paragraph Exposure

“Exposure” means, unless otherwise specified in Paragraph 11 for any Valuation Date or other date for which Exposure is calculated and subject to Paragraph 4 in the case of a dispute:
(i) if this Agreement is a 1992 ISDA Master Agreement, the amount, if any, that would be payable to that party by the other party (expressed as a positive number) or by that party to the other party (expressed as a negative number) pursuant to Section 6(e)(ii)(1) of this Agreement if all Covered Transactions (other than the Transaction constituted by this Annex) were being terminated as of the relevant Valuation Time on the basis that
(A) that party is not the Affected Party and
(B) the Base Currency is the Termination Currency;
provided that Market Quotations will be determined by the Valuation Agent on behalf of that party using its estimates at mid-market of the amounts that would be paid for Replacement Transactions (as that term is defined in the definition of “Market Quotation”); and
(ii) if this Agreement is an ISDA 2002 Master Agreement or a 1992 ISDA Master Agreement in which the definition of Loss and/or Market Quotation has been amended (including where such amendment has occurred pursuant to the terms of a separate agreement or protocol) to reflect the definition of Close-out Amount from the pre-printed form of the ISDA 2002 Master Agreement as published by ISDA, the amount, if any, that would be payable to that party by the other party (expressed as a positive number) or by that party to the other party (expressed as a negative number) pursuant to Section 6(e)(ii)(1) (but without reference to clause (3) of Section 6(e)(ii)) of this Agreement as if all Covered Transactions (other than the Transactions constituted by this Annex) were being terminated as of the relevant Valuation Time on the basis that
(A) that party is not the Affected Party and
(B) the Base Currency is the Termination Currency;
provided that the Close-out Amount will be determined by the Valuation Agent on behalf of that party using its estimates at mid-market of the amounts that would be paid for transactions providing the economic equivalent of (X) the material terms of the Covered Transactions, including the payments and deliveries by the parties under Section 2(a)(i) in respect of the Covered Transactions that would, but for the occurrence of the relevant Early Termination Date, have been required after that date (assuming satisfaction of the conditions precedent in Section 2(a)(iii) of this Agreement); and (Y) the option rights of the parties in respect of the Covered Transactions.


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Content and comparisons

Differences between versions

The difference between the two versions of English law CSA (see link in box for comparison) is that the 1995 CSA assumes you are trading under a 1992 ISDA, using the Market Quotation valuation technique — which kind of figures, since the 2002 ISDA with its Close-out Amount methodology hadn’t then been invented — whereas the 2016 VM CSA version contemplates you having a either a 1992 ISDA or a 2002 ISDA and provides for them in the alternative.

The 2016 NY Law VM CSA tracks the 2016 VM CSA closely with two curious exceptions: Firstly, when imagining its hypothetical termination of all Transactions it doesn’t explicitly carve out the Transaction constituted by the 2016 NY Law VM CSA itself — which is odd, because if you were treating it as a Transaction to be hypothetically included, you necessarily get a value of zero, since its value should be the exact negative of whatever the net mark-to-market value of all the other Transactions are — and secondly it does not hypothetically suppose that the Secured Party is the Unaffected Party, thereby getting to be in the driver’s seat when constructing the necessary valuations.

The reason you don’t have to except a 2016 NY Law VM CSA from hypothetical termination is buried deep in its earthen ontological root system. Are you ready?

Deep ontological differences between NY and English law versions

Unlike a title transfer English law CSA which is expressed to be a Transaction under the ISDA Master Agreement, the 2016 NY Law VM CSA is not: it is instead a “Credit Support Document”: a standalone collateral arrangement that stands aloof and apart from the ISDA Master Agreement and all its little diabolical Transactions. The reason for this is — spoiler: it’s not a very good one — because while a English law CSA, by being a title transfer collateral arrangement, necessarily reverses the indebtedness between the parties outright, an 2016 NY Law VM CSA (and, for that matter, an English law English law CSD) does not: it only provides a security interest. The in-the-money counterparty is still in-the-money. It is just secured for that exposure. The outright exposure between the parties does not change as a result of the pledge of credit support.

This is magical, bamboozling stuff — deep ISDA lore — and, at least where rehypothecation is allowed under Paragraph 6(c) of a 2016 NY Law VM CSA — it pretty much always is — it serves no real purpose, because even though you say you are only pledging the collateral, in the the greasy light of commercial reality, from the moment the Secured Party rehypothecates your pledged assets away into the market, dear Pledgor you have transferred your title outright.

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Summary

The total mark-to-market exposure under your ISDA Master Agreement on a given day, not counting anything posted by way of credit support. That is, Exposure omits the mark-to-market exposure of the Transaction comprising the CSA itself,[1] because that would entirely bugger things up: the MTM of an ISDA including the CSA is, of course, more or less zero.

Relevance of Section 6 to the peacetime operation of the Credit Support Annex

The calculation of Exposure under the CSA is modelled on the Section 6(e)(ii) termination methodology following a Termination Event where there is one Affected Party, which in turn tracks the Section 6(e)(i) methodology following an Event of Default, only taking mid-market valuations and not those on the Non-Defaulting Party’s side.

This means you calculate the Exposure as:

(a) the Close-out Amounts for each Terminated Transaction plus
(b) Unpaid Amounts due to the Non-defaulting Party; minus
(c) Unpaid Amounts due to the Defaulting Party.

There aren’t really likely, in peacetime, to be Unpaid Amounts loafing about — an amount that you are due to pay today or tomorrow wouldn’t, yet, qualify as “unpaid”, but would be factored into the Close-out Amount calculation.

There is a little bit of a dissonance here, since “Exposure” is a snapshot calculation that treats all future cashflows, whether due in a day, a month or a year from today, the same way: it discounts them back to today, adds them up and sets them off. Your Delivery Amount or Return Amount, as the case may be, is just the difference between that Exposure and whatever the existing Credit Support Balance is. The future is the future: unknowable, unpredictable, but discountable, whether it happens in a day or a thousand years.

All the same, this can seem kind of weird when your CSA you have to pay him an amount today when he owes you an even bigger amount tomorrow. It’s like, “hang on: why am I paying you margin when, tomorrow, you are going to be in the hole to me? Like, by double, if I pay you this margin and you fail to me tomorrow.”

The thing which, I think, causes all the confusion is the dates and amounts of payments under normal Transactions are deterministic, anticipatable, and specified in the Confirmation, whereas whether one is required under a CSA on any day, and how much it will be, depend on things you only usually find out about at the last minute. CSA payments are due “a regular settlement cycle after they are called” — loosey goosey, right? — (or even same day if you are under a VMV CSA and you are on the ball with your calls) whereas normal swap payments are due (say) “on the 15th of March”

So, a scenario to illustrate:

  • Day 1: Party A has an Exposure — is out of the money — to the tune of 100. Its prevailing Credit Support Balance is 90, so (let’s say, for fun, after the Notification Time on the Demand Date) Party B has called it for a Delivery Amount of a further 10, which it must pay, but not until tomorrow.
  • Day 2: Meanwhile, Party A has a Transaction payment of 10 that falls due to Party B, also tomorrow. The arrival of this payment will change Party A’s Exposure to Party B so it is 90. Assuming Party A also pays the Delivery Amount, by knock-off time tomorrow it will have posted a Credit Support Balance of 100, and its Exposure to Party B will only be 90. This means it will be entitled to call Party B for a Return Amount of 10.

This seems rather a waste of operational effort, and will also take years off your credit officer’s life and may even cause his hair to catch fire. Can Party A just not pay the further Delivery Acount in anticipation of what will happen tomorrow?

Fun times in the world of collateral operations.

Market Quotation and the 2002 ISDA

  • Market Quotation? But I have a 2002 ISDA: Note the references to Market Quotation and other 1992 ISDA specific things. If you are under a 2002 ISDA, these should be corrected. Of you could sign up to the 2002 ISDA Master Agreement Protocol and that would do it for you. In the 2016 VM CSA, note both versions of the ISDA Master Agreement, with their contrasting approaches to close-out valuation, are provided for in the alternative.
  • Mid-market?: A slight cognitive dissonance: It talks about your 6(e)(ii) amount - which is generally your replacement cost, at your side of the market, but then goes on to say determined at the mid-market price, which is fair, though, because you aren’t in default, and if each party used its own side of the market the Credit Support Balance could never find stability or happeness, even fleetingly, and the credit support world would be in some kinds of infinite loop.

Calculating your 2016 VM CSA

Superficially things are quite different between the 1995 CSA and the 2016 VM CSA, but this all boils down to the fact that the 2016 VM CSA is meant to be a zero-threshold, variation margin-only affair, so the concepts of Independent Amount and Threshold, both of which confuse the 1995 CSA, aren’t there to get in the way. Unless you go and put them in anyway, as we shall see...

1995 CSA

How the IA contributes to the Credit Support Amount — being the amount of credit support in total that one party must have given the other at any time[2] under the 1995 CSA can be mind-boggling.

It pans out for a Transferee like so:

This leaves you with a formula for a Transferee’s Credit Support Amount as follows: Max[0, (ETee + IATor - IATee + Threshold)].

Let’s plug in some numbers. Say:

Your Credit Support Amount is therefore the greater of zero and 10,000,000 + 2,000,000 - 0 + 5,000,000) = 7,000,000.

Now, whether you have to pay anything or receive anything as a result — whether there is a Delivery Amount or a Return Amount, in other words — depends whether your Credit Support Amount is greater or smaller than your prevailing Credit Support Balance, by at least the Minimum Transfer Amount.

2016 VM CSA with no IA amendment

Since the 2016 VM CSA assumes there is no Independent Amounts and no Thresholds, it is quite a lot easier. It is just the Exposure. So much so, that there isn’t even a concept of the “Credit Support Amount” under the 2016 VM CSA, unless you have retrofitted one, and who in their right mind would do that?

Oh.

You have, haven’t you. You’ve gone and co-opted the Credit Support Amount (VM/IA) concept in your Paragraph 11 elections. Yes you did. No, don’t blame your credit department; don’t say you were just following orders. You did it.

2016 VM CSA with a customised IA amendment

Never mind. Well, just for you, the formula is a sort of half-way house: Under this unholy bastardisation of a 2016 VM CSA, a Transferee’s Credit Support Amount will be: Max[0, (ETee + IATor - IATee)].

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See also

Delivery Amount and Return Amount — the unbelievable, fiendishly complex machinery to work out what you must to just to move collateral each day.

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References

  1. ↑ Assuming you are on a proper, sensible, English law title transfer CSA, which counts as a Transaction, and not one of those silly American ones, which doesn’t.
  2. ↑ As opposed to the amount required to be transferred on that day, considering the “Credit Support Balance” the Transferee already holds — that’s the Delivery Amount or Return Amount, as the case may be.
  3. ↑ There’s something faintly absurd both parties exchanging Independent Amounts by title transfer — they net off against each other — but that’s as may be. Stupider things have happened. SFTR disclosure, for example.
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