ISDA Master Agreement
Foundational concepts
- What is a swap, how does it work? – founding concepts:
- Underliers
- “synthetic exposure”
- Mark-to-market value
- Replacement cost
- Hedging
Architecture
- Structure: How it hangs together – Master/Schedule/CSA/Master Confirmations/Confirms
Big drafting issues
- Valuation and Calculation: of transactions – differing standards between asset classes
- Credit:
- Events of Default and Termination Events, the differences between them
- Cross Default and inadvertent solvency risks
- Additional Termination Events that will be specific to counterparties
- Credit Support Providers,
- Specified Entities
- Close out:
Netting
- The importance of close-out netting
- Netting opinions
- Counterparty types
- Automatic Early Termination
- Collateral
- Multibranch parties
Collateral
How the CSA works
- Title transfer versus pledge
- “Equivalent” credit support
- Independent Amounts
- Changes wrought by regulations for variation margin
- Valuation of collateral and exposure values
Tax representations
Notices and communications
Definitions booklets
Process issues
- Capacity and authority
- Onboarding and AML
- Static data and netting flags
Who are the stakeholders?
- Credit
- Treasury
- Legal
- Trading
- Sales