Portfolio Risk Archives

Duration Risk: Daily Interest Rate Risk Management and Hedging Now Indispensable

The rapid decline of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank affirms the strong need for daily interest rate risk measurement and hedging. All financial institutions should have well documented management and board limits on these exposures.

Measuring risk on complex mortgage-backed securities and loan portfolios that have embedded prepayment and credit risk is challenging. RiskSpan has a one-stop risk measurement solution for all mortgage-backed securities, structured product, loan and other related assets including data management, proprietary models and risk reporting.

Our bank clients enjoy the benefit of daily risk measurement to ensure they are well-hedged in this volatile market environment.

For a limited time, under full non-disclosure, RiskSpan will offer a one-time analysis on your securities portfolio.

Please reach out if we can help your institution more fully understand the market risk in your portfolios.

There are many lessons to learn through the SVB failure. While technology (the internet) enabled the fastest run on a bank in US history, technology can also be the solution. As we just saw US Government securities are risk-free for credit but not interest rate movements. When rates rose, security prices on the balance sheet of SVB declined in lock-step. All financial institutions (of all sizes) need to act now and deploy modern tech to manage modern risks – this means managing duration risk on a daily basis. It’s no longer acceptable for banks to review this risk monthly or weekly. Solutions exists that are practical, reliable and affordable.

RiskSpan Wins Risk as a Service Category for Third Consecutive Year, Rises 6 Places in RiskTech100® 2023 Ranking

ARLINGTON, Va., December 6, 2022 –RiskSpan’s Edge Platform, the only single solution to include data management, models, and analytics on fully scalable, cloud-native architecture, wins “Risk as a Service” category for a third consecutive year in Chartis Research’s vaunted RiskTech100® ranking of the world’s 100 top risk technology companies.

RiskSpan was also called out as a most significant mover, climbing 6 places in the overall ranking and improving its position for the fourth year in a row.

“RiskSpan’s strong innovation in data management helped drive its six-place rise in the rankings this year,’ said Sid Dash, Research Director at Chartis. ‘The company has won the RaaS award for three consecutive years, reflecting its tech-centric and pragmatic approach in a key area of the risk management space.”

Licensed by some of the largest asset managers, broker/dealers, hedge funds, mortgage REITs and insurance companies in the U.S., the Edge Platform is a fully managed risk solution across all asset classes with specialization in residential mortgage and structured products.

“This year’s award reflects the Edge Platform’s unique ability to help users find alpha, execute transactions with ease, and effectively manage portfolio risks,” noted Bernadette Kogler, RiskSpan’s co-founder and CEO. It is satisfying to be recognized for our continued efforts to help clients transform their business with modern workflows and operations to optimize productivity, cost, and resilience.”

About RiskSpan, Inc.

RiskSpan offers cloud-native SaaS analytics for on-demand market risk, credit risk, pricing and trading. With our data science experts and technologists, we are the leader in data as a service and end-to-end solutions for loan-level data management and analytics.

Our mission is to be the most trusted and comprehensive source of data and analytics for loans and structured finance investments.

Rethink loan and structured finance data. Rethink your analytics. Learn more at www.riskspan.com.

About Chartis Research:

Chartis Research is the leading provider of research and analysis on the global market for risk technology. It is part of Infopro Digital, which owns market-leading brands such as Risk and WatersTechnology. Chartis’ goal is to support enterprises as they drive business performance through improved risk management, corporate governance and compliance, and to help clients make informed technology and business decisions by providing in-depth analysis and actionable advice on virtually all aspects of risk technology.

Media contact: Timothy Willis

Striking a Proper Balance: ESG for Structured Finance

The securitization market continues to wrestle with the myriad of approaches and lack of standards in identifying and reporting ESG factors in transactions and asset classes. But much needed guidance is on the way as industry leaders work toward a consensus on the best way to report ESG for structured finance.

RiskSpan gathered with other key industry players tackling these challenges at this month’s third annual Structured Finance Association ESG symposium in New York City. The event identified a number of significant strides taken toward shaping an industry-standard ESG framework and guidelines.

Robust and engaging discussions across a variety of topics illustrated the critical need for a thoughtful approach to framework development. We observed a broad consensus around the notion that market acceptance would require any solution to be data supported and fully transparent.

Much of the discussion revolved around three recurring themes: Finding a workable balance between the institutional desire for portfolio-specific measures based on raw data and the market need for a standardized scoring mechanism that everybody understands, maintaining data privacy, and assessing tradeoffs between the societal benefits of ESG investing and the added risk it can pose to a portfolio.

Striking the Right Balance: Institution-Specific Measures vs. Industry-Standard Asset Scoring

When it comes to disclosure and reporting, one point on a spectrum does not fit all. Investors and asset managers vary in their ultimate reporting needs and approach to assessing ESG and impact investing. On the one hand, having raw data to apply their own analysis or specific standards can be more worthwhile to individual institutions. On the other, having well defined standards or third-party ESG scoring systems for assets provides greater certainty and understanding to the market as a whole.

Both approaches have value.

Everyone wants access to data and control over how they view the assets in their portfolio. But the need for guidance on what ESG impacts are material and relevant to structured finance remains prominent. Scores, labels, methodologies, and standards can give investors assurance a security contributes to meeting their ESG goals. Investors want to know where their money is going and if it is meaningful.

Methodologies also have to be explainable. Though there was agreement that labeled transactions are not always necessary (or achievable), integration of ESG factors in the decision process is. Reporting systems will need to link underlying collateral to external data sources to calculate key metrics required by a framework while giving users the ability to drill down to meet specific and granular analytical needs.

Data Privacy

Detailed analysis of underlying asset data, however, highlights a second key issue: the tradeoff between transparency and privacy, particularly for consumer-related assets. Fiduciary and regulatory responsibility to protect disclosure of non-public personally identifiable information limits investor ability to access loan-level data.

While property addresses provide the greatest insight to climate risk and other environmental factors, concerns persist over methods that allow data providers to triangulate and match data from various sources to identify addresses. This in turn makes it possible to link sensitive credit information to specific borrowers.

The responsibility to summarize and disclose metrics required by the framework falls to issuers. The largest residential issuers already appreciate this burden. These issuers have expressed a desire to solve these issues and are actively looking at what they can do to help the market without sacrificing privacy. Data providers, reporting systems, and users will all need to consider the guardrails needed to adhere to source data terms of use.

Assessing Impact versus Risk

Another theme arising in nearly all discussions centered on assessing ESG investment decisions from the two sometimes competing dimensions of impact and risk and considering whether tradeoffs are needed to meet a wide variety of investment goals. Knowing the impact the investment is making—such as funding affordable housing or the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions—is fundamental to asset selection or understanding the overall ESG position.

But what risks/costs does the investment create for the portfolio? What is the likely influence on performance?

The credit aspect of a deal is distinct from its ESG impact. For example, a CMBS may be socially positive but rent regulation can create thin margins. Ideally, all would like to maximize positive impact but not at the cost of performance, a strategy that may be contributing now to an erosion in greeniums. Disclosures and reporting capabilities should be able to support investment analyses on these dimensions.

A disclosure framework vetted and aligned by industry stakeholders, combined with robust reporting and analytics and access to as much underlying data as possible, will give investors and asset managers certainty as well as flexibility to meet their ESG goals.

Asset Managers Improving Yields With Resi Whole Loans

An unmistakable transformation is underway among asset managers and insurance companies with respect to whole loan investments. Whereas residential mortgage loan investing has historically been the exclusive province of commercial banks, a growing number of other institutional investors – notably life insurance companies and third-party asset managers – have shifted their attention toward this often-overlooked asset class.

Life companies and other asset managers with primarily long-term, risk-sensitive objectives are no strangers to residential mortgages. Their exposure, however, has traditionally been in the form of mortgage-backed securities, generally taking refuge in the highest-rated bonds. Investors accustomed to the AAA and AA tranches may understandably be leery of whole-loan credit exposure. Infrastructure investments necessary for managing a loan portfolio and the related credit-focused surveillance can also seem burdensome. But a new generation of tech is alleviating more of the burden than ever before and making this less familiar and sometimes misunderstood asset class increasingly accessible to a growing cadre of investors.

Maximizing Yield

Following a period of low interest rates, life companies and other investment managers are increasingly embracing residential whole-loan mortgages as they seek assets with higher returns relative to traditional fixed-income investments (see chart below). As highlighted in the chart below, residential mortgage portfolios, on a loss-adjusted basis, consistently outperform other investments, such as corporate bonds, and look increasingly attractive relative to private-label residential mortgage-backed securities as well.

Nearly one-third of the $12 trillion in U.S. residential mortgage debt outstanding is currently held in the form of loans.

And while most whole loans continue to be held in commercial bank portfolios, a growing number of third-party asset managers have entered the fray as well, often on behalf of their life insurance company clients.

Investing in loans introduces a dimension of credit risk that investors do need to understand and manage through thoughtful surveillance practices. As the chart below (generated using RiskSpan’s Edge Platform) highlights, when evaluating yields on a loss-adjusted basis, resi whole loans routinely generate yield.

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In addition to higher yields, whole loans investments offer investors other key advantages over securities. Notably:

Data Transparency

Although transparency into private label RMBS has improved dramatically since the 2008 crisis, nothing compares to the degree of loan-level detail afforded whole-loan investors. Loan investors typically have access to complete loan files and therefore complete loan-level datasets. This allows for running analytics based on virtually any borrower, property, or loan characteristic and contributes to a better risk management environment overall. The deeper analysis enabled by loan-level and property-specific information also permits investors to delve into ESG matters and better assess climate risk.

Daily Servicer Updates

Advancements in investor reporting are increasingly granting whole loan investors access to daily updates on their portfolio performance. Daily updating provides investors near real-time updates on prepayments and curtailments as well as details regarding problem loans that are seriously delinquent or in foreclosure and loss mitigation strategies. Eliminating the various “middlemen” between primary servicers and investors (many of the additional costs of securitization outlined below—master servicers, trustees, various deal and data “agents,” etc.—have the added negative effect of adding layers between security investors and the underlying loans) is one of the things that makes daily updates possible.

Lower Transaction Costs

Driven largely by a lack of trust in the system and lack of transparency into the underlying loan collateral, private-label securities investments incur a series of yield-eroding transactions costs that whole-loan investors can largely avoid. Consider the following transaction costs in a typical securitization:

Loan Data Agent costs: The concept of a loan data agent is unique to securitization. Data agents function essentially as middlemen responsible for validating the performance of other vendors (such as the Trustee). The fee for this service is avoided entirely by whole loan investors, which generally do not require an intermediary to get regularly updated loan-level data from servicers.
Securities Administrator/Custodian/Trustee costs: These roles present yet another layer of intermediary costs between the borrower/servicer and securities investors that are not incurred in whole loan investing.
Deal Agent costs: Deal agents are third party vendors typically charged with enhancing transparency in a mortgage security and ensuring that all parties’ interests are protected. The deal agent typically performs a surveillance role and charges investors ongoing annual fees plus additional fees for individual loan file reviews. These costs are not borne by whole loan investors.
Due diligence costs: While due diligence costs factor into loan and security investments alike, the additional layers of review required for agency ratings tends to drive these costs higher for securities. While individual file reviews are also required for both types of investments, purchasing loans only from trusted originators allows investors to get comfortable with reviewing a smaller sample of new loans. This can push due diligence costs on loan portfolios to much lower levels when compared to securities.
Servicing costs: Mortgage servicing costs are largely unavoidable regardless of how the asset is held. Loan investors, however, tend to have more options at their disposal. Servicing fees for securities vary from transaction to transaction with little negotiating power by the security investors. Further, securities investors incur master servicing fees which is generally not a required function for managing whole loan investments.

Emerging technology is streamlining the process of data cleansing, normalization and aggregation, greatly reducing the operational burden of these processes, particularly for whole loan investors, who can cut out many of these intermediary parties entirely.

Overcoming Operational Hurdles

Much of investor reluctance to delve into loans has historically stemmed from the operational challenges (real and perceived) associated with having to manage and make sense of the underlying mountain of loan, borrower, and property data tied to each individual loan. But forward-thinking asset managers are increasingly finding it possible to offload and outsource much of this burden to cloud-native solutions purpose built to store, manage, and provide analytics on loan-level mortgage data, such as RiskSpan’s Edge Platform supporting loan data management and analytics. RiskSpan solutions make it easy to mine available loan portfolios for profitable sub-cohorts, spot risky loans for exclusion, apply a host of credit and prepay scenario analyses, and parse static and performance data in any way imaginable.

At an increasing number of institutions, demonstrating the power of analytical tools and the feasibility of applying them to the operational and risk management challenges at hand will solve many if not most of the hurdles standing in the way of obtaining asset class approval for mortgage loans. The barriers to access are coming down, and the future is brighter than ever for this fascinating, dynamic and profitable asset class.

RS Edge Platform Implementation Streamlined Processes Reducing Client Resource Support Needs by 46%-VERSION 2

Asset Manager | New York, NY

RiskSpan Applications Provided

MARKET RISK ANALYTICS

MODELS & FORECASTING

MODEL VALIDATION

GOVERNANCE

ABOUT THE CLIENT

A leading provider of capital and services to the mortgage and financial services industries that leverage their proven investment expertise and identity and invest in assets that offer attractive risk-adjusted returns while also protecting our existing portfolio and generating long-term value for our investors.

PROBLEM

An asset manager sought to replace an inflexible risk system provided by a Wall Street dealer. The portfolio was diverse, with a sizable concentration in structured securities and mortgage assets.

The legacy analytics system was rigid with no flexibility to vary scenarios or critical investor and regulatory reporting.

CHALLENGE

Lacked a single-solution

Data integrity issues

Inflexible locally installed risk management system

No direct connectivity to downstream systems

Models + Data management = End-to-end Managed Process

HIGHLIGHTS

GET STARTED

5 Vendors → Single Platform

32% Annual Cost Savings

Increased Flexibility

Additional

DOWNLOAD CASE STUDY

SOLUTION

RiskSpan’s Edge Platform delivered a cost-efficient and flexible solution by bundling required data feeds, predictive models for mortgage and structured products, and infrastructure management.

The Platform manages and validates the asset manager’s third-party and portfolio data and produces scenario analytics in a secure hosted environment.

TESTIMONIAL

”Our existing daily process for calculating, validating, and reporting on key market and credit risk metrics required significant manual work… [Edge] gets us to the answers faster, putting us in a better position to identify exposures and address potential problems.”

— Managing Director, Securitized Products

EDGE PROVIDED

END-TO-END DATA AND RISK MANAGEMENT PLATFORM

Scalable, cloud native technology
Increased flexibility to run analytics at loan level; additional interactive / ad-hoc analytics
Reliable accurate data with frequent updates

COST AND OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCIES GAINED

Streamlined workflows | Automated processes
32% annual cost savings
46% fewer resources needed for maintenance

RS Edge Platform Implementation Streamlined Processes Reducing Client Resource Support Needs by 46%-VERSION 1

AT-A-GLANCE

An asset manager sought to replace an inflexible risk system provided by a Wall Street dealer. The portfolio was diverse, with a sizable concentration in structured securities and mortgage assets.

The legacy analytics system was rigid with no flexibility to vary scenarios or critical investor and regulatory reporting.

5 Vendors → Single Platform

32% Annual Cost Savings

Increased Flexibility

Additional Ad-hoc Analytics

”Our existing daily process for calculating, validating, and reporting on key market and credit risk metrics required significant manual work… [Edge] gets us to the answers faster, putting us in a better position to identify exposures and address potential problems.”

— Managing Director, Securitized Products

LET US BUILD YOUR SOLUTION

Models + Data management = End-to-end Managed Process

CHALLENGES

Lacked a single-solution

Data integrity issues

Inflexible locally installed risk management system

No direct connectivity to downstream systems

SOLUTIONS

RiskSpan’s Edge Platform delivered a cost-efficient and flexible solution by bundling required data feeds, predictive models for mortgage and structured products, and infrastructure management.

The Platform manages and validates the asset manager’s third-party and portfolio data and produces scenario analytics in a secure hosted environment.

EDGE WE PROVIDED

End-to-end data and risk management platform

Scalable, cloud native technology
Increased flexibility to run analytics at loan level; additional interactive / ad-hoc analytics
Reliable accurate data with frequent updates

Cost and operational efficiencies gained

Streamlined workflows | Automated processes
32% annual cost savings
46% fewer resources needed for maintenance

RiskSpan Wins Risk as a Service Category for Second Consecutive Year, Leaps 12 Spots in RiskTech100® 2022 Ranking

RiskSpan’s Edge Platform, a leading provider of risk analytics, data, and behavioral modeling to the structured finance industry, is the “Risk as a Service” category winner for the second consecutive year in Chartis Research’s prestigious RiskTech100® ranking of the world’s 100 top risk technology firms.

The win accompanies a 12-point improvement in RiskSpan’s overall ranking, placing the firm among the year’s most significant movers.

“RiskSpan’s continued growth and ongoing partnership strategy have made it one of the big risers in the rankings this year,” said Phil Mackenzie, Research Principal at Chartis Research. “Its strength in securitization and analytics as a service is reflected in its 12-point jump.”

Licensed by some of the largest asset managers, broker/dealers, hedge funds, mortgage REITs and insurance companies in the U.S., Edge is a one-stop shop for research, analytics, pricing, risk metrics, and reporting. Edge’s cloud-native infrastructure scales as individual client needs change and is supported by RiskSpan’s unparalleled team of mortgage and structured finance experts.

“This year’s award reflects a year marked by an unprecedented wave of enhancements to our risk platform, noted Bernadette Kogler, RiskSpan’s co-founder and CEO. “Our loan-level analytics has been a hit, while our fully managed risk option continues to tailor scalable offerings to individual client needs. Our best-in-class portfolio analytics for structured products are fast becoming the talk of the industry.”

About RiskSpan

RiskSpan offers end-to-end solutions for data management, risk analytics, and visualization on a highly secure, fast, and fully scalable, cloud-native platform that has earned the trust of the mortgage and structured finance industry’s largest firms. Combining the strength of subject matter experts, quantitative analysts, and technologists, RiskSpan’s Edge Platform integrates a range of datasets – structured and unstructured – and off-the-shelf analytical tools providing users with powerful insights and a competitive advantage. Learn more at www.riskspan.com.

About Chartis Research:

Chartis Research is the leading provider of research and analysis on the global market for risk technology. It is part of Infopro Digital, which owns market-leading brands such as Risk and WatersTechnology. Chartis’ goal is to support enterprises as they drive business performance through improved risk management, corporate governance and compliance, and to help clients make informed technology and business decisions by providing in-depth analysis and actionable advice on virtually all aspects of risk technology.

Managing Market Risk for Crypto Currencies

Overview

Asset Volatility vs Asset Sensitivity to Benchmark (Beta)

Portfolio Asset Covariance

Value at Risk (VaR)

Bitcoin Futures: Basis and Proxies

Intraday Value at Risk (VaR)

Risk-Based Limits

VaR Validation (Bayesian Approach)

Scenario Analysis

Conclusion

Overview

Crypto currencies have now become part of institutional investment strategies. According to CoinShares, assets held under management by crypto managers reached $57B at the end of Q1 2021.

Like any other financial asset, crypto investments are subject to market risk monitoring with several approaches evolving. Crypto currencies exhibit no obvious correlation to other assets classes, risk factors or economic variables. However, crypto currencies have exhibited high price volatility and have enough historical data to implement a robust market risk process.

In this paper we discuss approaches to implementing market risk analytics for a portfolio of crypto assets. We will look at betas to benchmarks, correlations, Value at Risk (VaR) and historical event scenarios.

Value at Risk allows risk managers to implement risk-based limits structures, instead of relying on traditional notional measures. The methodology we propose enables consolidation of risk for crypto assets with the rest of the portfolio. We will also discuss the use of granular time horizons for intraday limit monitoring.

Asset Volatility vs Asset Sensitivity to Benchmark (Beta)

For exchange-traded instruments, beta measures the sensitivity of asset price returns relative to a benchmark. For US-listed large cap stocks, beta is generally computed relative to the S&P 500 index. For crypto currencies, several eligible benchmark indices have emerged that represent the performance of the overall crypto currency market.

We analyzed several currencies against S&P’s Bitcoin Index (SPBTC). SPBTC is designed to track the performance of the original crypto asset, Bitcoin. As market capitalization for other currencies grows, it would be more appropriate to switch to a dynamic multi-currency index such as Nasdaq’s NCI. At the time of this paper, Bitcoin constituted 62.4% of NCI.

Traditionally, beta is calculated over a variable time frame using least squares fit on a linear regression of benchmark return and asset return. One of the issues with calculating betas is the variability of the beta itself. In order to overcome that, especially given the volatility of crypto currencies, we recommend using a rolling beta.

Due to the varying levels of volatility and liquidity of various crypto currencies, a regression model may not always be a good fit. In addition to tracking fit through R-squared, it is important to track confidence level for the computed betas.

Figure 1 History of Beta to S&P Bitcoin Index with Confidence Intervals

The chart above shows rolling betas and confidence intervals for four crypto currencies between January 2019 and July 2021. Beta and confidence interval both vary over time and periods of high volatility (stress) cause a larger dislocation in the value of beta.

Rolling betas can be used to generate a hierarchical distribution of expected asset values.

Portfolio Asset Covariance

Beta is a useful measure to track an asset’s volatility relative to a single benchmark. In order to numerically analyze the risk exposure (variance) of a portfolio with multiple crypto assets, we need to compute a covariance matrix. Portfolio risk is a function not only of each asset’s volatility but also of the cross-correlation among them.

Figure 2 Correlations for 11 currencies (calculated using observations from 2021)

The table above shows a correlation matrix across 11 crypto assets, including Bitcoin.

Like betas, correlations among assets change over time. But correlation matrices are more unwieldy to track over time than betas are. For this reason, hierarchical models provide a good, practical framework for time-varying covariance matrices.

Value at Risk (VaR)

The VaR for a position or portfolio can be defined as some threshold Τ (in dollars) where the existing position, when faced with market conditions resembling some given historical period, will have P/L greater than Τ with probability k. Typically, k is chosen to be 99% or 95%.

To compute this threshold Τ, we need to:

Set a significance percentile k, a market observation period, and holding period n.
Generate a set of future market conditions (scenarios) from today to period n.
Compute a P/L on the position for each scenario

After computing each position’s P/L, we sum the P/L for each scenario and then rank the scenarios’ P/Ls to find the the k th percentile (worst) loss. This loss defines our VaR Τ at the the k th percentile for observation-period length n.

Determining what significance percentile k and observation length n to use is straightforward and often dictated by regulatory rules. For example, 99^th percentile 10-day VaR is used for risk-based capital under the Market Risk Rule. Generating the scenarios and computing P/L under these scenarios is open to interpretation. We cover each of these, along with the advantages and drawbacks of each, in the next two sections.

To compute VaR, we first need to generate projective scenarios of market conditions. Broadly speaking, there are two ways to derive this set of scenarios:

Project future market conditions using historical (actual) changes in market conditions
Project future market conditions using a Monte Carlo simulation framework

In this paper, we consider a historical simulation approach.

RiskSpan projects future market conditions using actual (observed) n-period changes in market conditions over the lookback period. For example, if we are computing 1-day VaR for regulatory capital usage under the Market Risk Rule, RiskSpan takes actual daily changes in risk factors. This approach allows our VaR scenarios to account for natural changes in correlation under extreme market moves. RiskSpan finds this to be a more natural way of capturing changing correlations without the arbitrary overlay of how to change correlations in extreme market moves. This, in turn, will more accurately capture VaR. Please note that newer crypto currencies may not have enough data to generate a meaningful set of historical scenarios. In these cases, using a benchmark adjusted by a short-term beta may be used as an alternative.

One key consideration for the historical simulation approach is the selection of the observation window or lookback period. Most regulatory guidelines require at least a one-year window. However, practitioners also recommend a shorter lookback period for highly volatile assets. In the chart below we illustrate how VaR for our portfolio of crypto currencies changes for a range of lookback periods and confidence intervals. Please note that VaR is expressed as a percentage of portfolio market value.

Use of an exponentially weighted moving average methodology can be used to overcome the challenges associated with using a shorter lookback period. This approach emphasizes recent observations by using exponentially weighted moving averages of squared deviations. In contrast to equally weighted approaches, these approaches attach different weights to the past observations contained in the observation period. Because the weights decline exponentially, the most recent observations receive much more weight than earlier observations.

Figure 3 Daily VaR as % of Market Value calculated using various historical observation periods

VaR as a single number does not represent the distribution of P/L outcomes. In addition to computing VaR under various confidence intervals, we also compute expected shortfall, worst loss, and standard deviation of simulated P/L vectors. Worst loss and standard deviation are self-explanatory while the calculation of expected shortfall is described below.

Expected shortfall is the average of all the P/L figures to the left of the VaR figure. If we have 1,000 simulated P/L vectors, and the VaR is the 950th worst case observation, the expected shortfall is the average of P/Ls from 951 to 1000.

The table below presents VaR-related metrics as a percentage of portfolio market value under various lookback periods.

Figure 4 VaR for a portfolio of crypto assets computed for various lookback periods and confidence intervals

Bitcoin Futures: Basis and Proxies

One of the most popular trades for commodity futures is the basis trade. This is when traders build a strategy around the difference between the spot price and futures contract price of a commodity. This exists in corn, soybean, oil and of course Bitcoin. For the purpose of calculating VaR, specific contracts may not provide enough history and risk systems use continuous contracts. Continuous contracts introduce additional basis as seen in the chart below. Risk managers need to work with the front office to align risk factor selection with trading strategies, without compromising independence of the risk process.

Figure 5 BTC/Futures basis difference between generic and active contracts

Intraday Value

The highly volatile nature of crypto currencies requires another consideration for VaR calculations. A typical risk process is run at the end of the day and VaR is calculated for a one-day or longer forecasting period. But Crypto currencies, especially Bitcoin, can also show significant intraday price movements.

We obtained intraday prices for Bitcoin (BTC) from Gemini, which is ranked third by volume. This data was normalized to create time series to generate historical simulations. The chart below shows VaR as a percentage of market value for Bitcoin (BTC) for one-minute, one-hour and one-day forecasting periods. Our analysis shows that a Bitcoin position can lose as much as 3.5% of its value in one hour (99^th percentile VaR).

Risk-Based Limits

Right from the inception of Value at Risk as a concept it has been used by companies to manage limits for a trading unit. VaR serves as a single risk-based limit metric with several advantages and a few challenges:

Pros of using VaR for risk-based limit:

VaR can be applied across all levels of portfolio aggregation.
Aggregations can be applied across varying exposures and strategies.
Today’s cloud scale makes it easy to calculate VaR using granular risk factor data.

VaR can be subject to model risk and manipulation. Transparency and use of market risk factors can avoid this pitfall.

Ability to calculate intra-day VaR is key for a risk-based limit implementation for crypto assets. Risk managers should consider at least an hourly VaR limit in addition to the traditional daily limits.

VaR Validation (Bayesian Approach)

Standard approaches for back-testing VaR are applicable to portfolios of crypto assets as well.

Given the volatile nature of this asset class, we also explored an approach to validating the confidence interval and percentiles implied from historical simulations. Although this is a topic that deserves its own document, we present a high-level explanation and results of our analysis.

Building an approach first proposed in the Pyfolio library, we generated a posterior distribution using the Pymc3 package from our historically observed VaR simulations.

Sampling routines from Pymc3 were used to generate 10,000 simulations of the 3-year lookback case. A distribution of percentiles (VaR) was then computed across these simulations.

The distribution shows that the mean 95^th percentile VaR would be 7.3% vs 8.9% calculated using the historical simulation approach. However, the tail of the distribution indicates a VaR closer to the historical simulation approach. One could conclude that the test indicates that the original calculation still represents the extreme case, which is the motivation behind VaR.

Figure 6 Distribution of percentiles generated from posterior simulations

Scenario Analysis

In addition to standard shock scenarios, we recommend using the volatility of Bitcoin to construct a simulation of outcomes. The chart below shows the change in Bitcoin (BTC) volatility for select events in the last two years. Outside of standard macro events, crypto assets respond to cyber security events and media effects, including social media.

Figure 7 Weekly observed volatility for Bitcoin

Conclusion

Given the volatility of crypto assets, we recommend, to the extent possible, a probability distribution approach. At the very least, risk managers should monitor changes in relationship (beta) of assets.

For most financial institutions, crypto assets are part of portfolios that include other traditional asset classes. A standard approach must be used across all asset classes, which may make it challenging to apply shorter lookback windows for computing VaR. Use of the exponentially weighted moving approach (described above) may be considered.

Intraday VaR for this asset class can be significant and risk managers should set appropriate limits to manage downward risk.

Idiosyncratic risks associated with this asset class have created a need for monitoring scenarios not necessarily applicable to other asset classes. For this reason, more scenarios pertaining to cyber risk are beginning to be applied across other asset classes.

Calculating VaR: A Review of Methods

Automating Compliance Risk Analytics

Recorded: August 4th | 1:00 p.m. EDT

Completing the risk sections of Form PF, AIFMD, Open Protocol and other regulatory filings requires submitters to first compute an extensive battery of risk analytics, often across a wide spectrum of trading strategies and instrument types. This “pre-work” is both painstaking and prone to human error. Automating these upstream analytics greatly simplifies life downstream for those tasked with completing these filings.

RiskSpan’s Marty Kindler walks through a process for streamlining delta equivalent exposure, 10 year bond equivalent exposure, DV01/CS01, option greeks, stress scenario impacts and VaR in support not only of downstream regulatory filings but of an enhanced, overall risk management regime.

Featured Speaker

Martin Kindler

Managing Director, RiskSpan

May 19 Workshop: Quality Control Using Anomaly Detection (Part 2)

Recorded: May 19 | 1:00 p.m. ET

Last month, RiskSpan’s Suhrud Dagli and Martin Kindler outlined the principles underlying anomaly detection and its QC applications related to market data and market risk. You can view a recording of that workshop here.

On Wednesday, May 19th, Suhrud presented Part 2 of this workshop, which dove into mortgage loan QC and introduce coding examples and approaches for avoiding false negatives using open-source Python algorithms in the Anomaly Detection Toolkit (ADTK).

RiskSpan presents various types of detectors, including extreme studentized deviate (ESD), level shift, local outliers, seasonal detectors, and volatility shift in the context of identifying spike anomalies and other inconsistencies in mortgage data. Specifically:

Coding examples for effective principal component analysis (PCA) loan data QC
Use cases around loan performance and entity correction, and
Novelty detection

Suhrud Dagli

Co-founder and CIO, RiskSpan

Martin Kindler

Managing Director, RiskSpan

Striking the Right Balance: Institution-Specific Measures vs. Industry-Standard Asset Scoring

Data Privacy

Assessing Impact versus Risk

Asset Manager | New York, NY

ABOUT THE CLIENT

PROBLEM

CHALLENGE

HIGHLIGHTS

SOLUTION

TESTIMONIAL

EDGE PROVIDED

AT-A-GLANCE

CHALLENGES

SOLUTIONS

EDGE WE PROVIDED

Contents

Overview

Asset Volatility vs Asset Sensitivity to Benchmark (Beta)

Portfolio Asset Covariance

Value at Risk (VaR)

Bitcoin Futures: Basis and Proxies

Intraday Value

Risk-Based Limits

VaR Validation (Bayesian Approach)

Scenario Analysis

Conclusion

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