Funding Matrix
Category: Corporate Governance
We have created what we call our «Funding Matrix», on which we have mapped all of our funding relevant assets and liabilities in time buckets corresponding to their maturities. Given that trading assets are typically more liquid than their contractual maturities suggest, we have divided them into liquids (assigned to the time bucket one year and under) and illiquid (assigned to time buckets up to five years based on modeling of their liquidation profile). We have modeled assets and liabilities that show a behavior of being renewed or prolonged regardless of capital market conditions (such as some retail products) and assigned them to time buckets accordingly.
The Funding Matrix shows the excess or shortfall of assets over liabilities in each time bucket and thus allows us to identify and manage open liquidity exposures. We have also developed a cumulative mismatch vector, which enables us to predict whether any excess or shortfall will grow, decline or switch over time. The Funding
Matrix forms the basis for our annual securities issuance plan which upon approval of our Group Asset and Liability Committee establishes issuing targets for securities by tenor, volume and instrument. On the basis of this model we have not identified any material funding mismatches.
Short-term Liquidity
We have established a system to track net cash outflows over an eight-week horizon. This system allows management to assess our short-term liquidity position in any location, region and globally on a by-currency and by-product basis. The system captures all of our cash flows, thereby including liquidity risks resulting from off-balance sheet transactions as well as from transactions on our balance sheet. We model transactions which have no specific contractual maturities using statistical analysis to capture the actual behavior of these transactions. Our Group Board, upon the recommendations of our Group Asset and Liability Committee, has set global and regional limits for the liquidity exposures which we monitor on a daily basis.
Funding Diversification and Asset Liquidity
Diversification of our funding profile in terms of investor types, regions, products and instruments is an important part of our liquidity policy. Our core funding resources, such as retail and fiduciary deposits and long-term capital markets funding, form the cornerstone of our liability profile. Customer deposits, funds from institutional investors and interbank funding are additional sources of funding. We use interbank deposits primarily to fund liquid assets.
In 2001, we completed the development of stress testing and scenario analysis to evaluate the impact of sudden, unforeseen events with an unfavorable impact on the bank’s liquidity. The scenarios are either based on historic events (such as the stock market crash of 1987, the U.S. liquidity crunch of 1990 and the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001) or modeled using hypothetical events. They include internal scenarios (such as operational risk, merger or acquisition, credit rating downgrade by 2 and 4 notches) as well as external scenarios (such as market risk, emerging markets, systemic shock and prolonged global recession).
Under each of these scenarios we assume that all maturing assets will need to be rolled over and require funding whereas rollover of liabilities will be partially impaired. We then model the steps we would take to counterbalance the resulting net shortfall in funding needs such as selling assets and adjusting the price we would pay for liabilities. This analysis is fully integrated within the existing liquidity framework. We take our contractual cash flows as a starting point, which enables us to track the cash flows per currency and product over an eight-week horizon (the most critical time span in a liquidity crisis) and apply the relevant stress case to each product. Asset saleability as described in the paragraph above complements the analysis. Our stress testing analysis provides guidance as to our ability to survive critical scenarios and would, if deficiencies were detected, cause us to make changes to our asset and liability structure. The analysis is performed monthly.
To assess the financial performance of a bank it is essential to have a breakdown of income and expenses. It typically includes an income statement that groups income and expenses by nature or function within the bank. For example, business and geographical segment information aids in the analysis of past performance and assists in assessing future prospects.