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Journal of Banking & Finance Vol. 32 No. 7 2008

Implicit recourse and credit card securitizations: What do fraud losses reveal?

Todd A. Vermilyea; Elizabeth R. Webb; Andrew A. Kish

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

Abstract

In this paper, we develop and test a model of implicit recourse in asset-backed securitizations. Fraud losses on securitized assets are generally incurred by the bank and do not affect the performance of securitization trusts, while credit losses do affect the trust’s performance and are potentially borne by the owner of the securitized assets. Thus, the classification of losses as either fraud or credit losses provides a potential avenue of implicit recourse to manipulate the performance of securitization trusts. Using annual data from 2001 to 2006, we find that the performance of the credit card securitization portfolio is negatively related to fraud losses reported by the bank. We examine these results in light of the proposed Basel II capital rules and argue that a bank’s incentive to provide implicit recourse will increase under the anticipated regime.

DOI
10.1016/j.jbankfin.2007.10.004
Volume
32
Issue
7
Pages
1198-1208
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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