An accurate forecast of the parameter loss given default (LGD) of loans plays a crucial role for risk-based decision making by banks. We theoretically analyze problems arising when forecasting LGDs of bank loans that lead to inconsistent estimates and a low predictive power. We present several improvements for LGD estimates, considering length-biased sampling, different loan characteristics depending on the type of default end, and different information sets according to the default status. We empirically demonstrate the capability of our proposals based on a data set of 69,985 defaulted bank loans. Our results are not only important for banks, but also for regulators, because neglecting these issues leads to a significant underestimation of capital requirements.

Estimating the credit risk parameter exposure at default is important for banks from an internal risk management and a regulatory perspective. Several approaches are common in the literature and in practice. We theoretically and empirically analyze how the exposure at default should be modeled to obtain accurate estimates of the expected loss. Our empirical analysis is based on a large and unique dataset from a retail portfolio of a European bank. We demonstrate that some approaches can lead to substantially biased estimates of the expected loss and show that the generalized cohort approach is advantageous. Moreover, using in- and out-of-sample analyses, we empirically demonstrate that using the credit conversion factor is preferable to the loan equivalent factor, exposure at default factor, and direct exposure at default estimation to achieve high estimation accuracy.