The current degradation of sovereign balance sheets raises very real concerns about how sovereign creditworthiness is measured by credit rating agencies. Given the disastrous economic and social effects of any downgrade, the book offers an alternative and calls for more transparency about the quantitative measures used in calibrating the rating process and how sovereign ratings are validated. It argues that oversight is required and procedures improved, including subjecting methodologies of assessing default to more standardization and monitoring. Sovereign Credit Rating explains the process of sovereign creditworthiness assessment and explores the consequences of possible inaccuracies in the process. Developing an innovative new methodology to assess ratings accuracy, it shows that the announcement of each rating action by the major credit rating agencies show alarming inconsistencies. Written by an internationally recognized author and professor, this unique book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in corporate governance, accounting, public finance and regulation.

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, it became apparent that pricing loans in a way that is profitable for lenders and sensitive to risk is anything but simple. Increasingly, lenders are following the lead of other retailers by segmenting their market and more precisely targeting customers. To do this successfully, lenders must engage analytic approaches, such as machine learning and optimization, in setting prices for each segment. Robert L. Phillips worked with major banks and financial services companies for more than a decade to help them improve their pricing capabilities. This book draws on his experience, as well as the latest academic research, to demonstrate how lenders can apply the proven techniques of price optimization to responsibly improve the profitability of their loans. It is a go-to resource for academics and professionals alike, particularly lenders who are looking for ways to do better business in an increasingly competitive (and regulated) market.

On most continents - from the USA to Africa and Asia - various forms of rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) serve men and women of the community, often as their major - and sometimes their only - savings institution. ROSCAs are self-help associations with participants who agree to make regular contributions to a fund which is given, in whole or in part, to each contributor in rotation. All but the last member receives credit, and certain ROSCAs have elaborate systems to meet this. Some even make special provision for inflation and default. They are common in both rural and urban areas and among a range of occupational and income groups, from the poor to white-collar and professional. They are used by women who do not have collateral for other forms of credit, and as such often play an important part in household and business finance. In providing important social and welfare resources, they constitute valuable social capital. Because even women who use banks and building societies may continue to use ROSCAs extensively, formal financial institutions are developing schemes for them.

"Money from Nothing" explores the dynamics surrounding South Africa's national project of financial inclusion--dubbed "banking the unbanked"--which aimed to extend credit to black South Africans as a critical aspect of broad-based economic enfranchisement.
Through rich and captivating accounts, Deborah James reveals the varied ways in which middle- and working-class South Africans' access to credit is intimately bound up with identity, status-making, and aspirations of upward mobility. She draws out the deeply precarious nature of both the aspirations and the economic relations of debt which sustain her subjects, revealing the shadowy side of indebtedness and its potential to produce new forms of oppression and disenfranchisement in place of older ones. "Money from Nothing" uniquely captures the lived experience of indebtedness for those many millions who attempt to improve their positions (or merely sustain existing livelihoods) in emerging economies.

European Banking and Financial Law Statutes presents all the key legislation for European banking and financial law in one student-friendly volume. This book is: * up-to-date with the law: based on the official consolidated texts of all relevant European instruments, this book provides a fully current collection of legislation * tailored to course outlines: content has been curated to align with European banking and financial law courses * exam friendly: conforming to regulations, this is an un-annotated text that is suitable for exam use * easy to use: a clear and attractive text design, detailed table of contents and multiple indices provides ease of reference and navigation. Ideal for course and exam use, as well as for reference, this book is a perfect companion resource for student learning and exam success, which is especially tailored for use in combination with the European Banking and Financial Law textbook.

Securities lending master agreements are vital for covering securities loans between contracting parties. They also offer legal and credit protection and a close-out netting procedure if a party defaults or goes bankrupt. These agreements are widely used by banks, securities houses, pension funds, hedge funds and insurance companies. ""

"Mastering Securities Lending Documentation" is a practical guide to understanding the negotiation of these master agreements used in the United Kingdom, United States and Europe. It is an essential handbook for anyone involved in negotiating these agreements and includes: An introduction to the history and operations of the market A clear, user-friendly explanation of all paragraphs of the master agreements An easy-to use split page format with the original text and commentary Examples of commonly negotiated additions and amendments and their implications Answers to legal, risk and operational questions

This fascinating study follows the fortunes of the Hoechstetter family, merchant-manufacturers and financiers of Augsburg, Germany, in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries, and sheds light on the economic and social history of failure and resilience in early modern Europe. Carefully tracing the chronology of the family's rise, fall and transformation, it moves from the micro- to the macro-level, making comparisons with other mercantile families of the time to draw conclusions and suggest insights into such issues as social mobility, capitalist organization, business techniques, market practices and economic institutions. The result is a microhistory that offers macro-conclusions about the lived experience of early capitalism and capitalistic practices. This book will be valuable reading for advanced students and researchers of economic, financial and business history, legal history and early modern European history.

It is common to blame the inadequacy of credit risk models for the fact that the financial crisis has caught many market participants by surprise. On closer inspection, though, it often appears that market participants failed to understand or to use the models correctly. The recent events therefore do not invalidate traditional credit risk modeling as described in the first edition of the book. A second edition is timely, however, because the first dealt relatively briefly with instruments featuring prominently in the crisis (CDSs and CDOs). In addition to expanding the coverage of these instruments, the book will focus on modeling aspects which were of particular relevance in the financial crisis (e.g. estimation error) and demonstrate the usefulness of credit risk modelling through case studies.

This book provides practitioners and students with an intuitive, hands-on introduction to modern credit risk modelling. Every chapter starts with an explanation of the methodology and then the authors take the reader step by step through the implementation of the methods in Excel and VBA. They focus specifically on risk management issues and cover default probability estimation (scoring, structural models, and transition matrices), correlation and portfolio analysis, validation, as well as credit default swaps and structured finance.

The book has an accompanying website, http: //loeffler-posch.com/, which has been specially updated for this Second Edition and contains slides and exercises for lecturers.

"Money from Nothing" explores the dynamics surrounding South Africa's national project of financial inclusion--dubbed "banking the unbanked"--which aimed to extend credit to black South Africans as a critical aspect of broad-based economic enfranchisement.
Through rich and captivating accounts, Deborah James reveals the varied ways in which middle- and working-class South Africans' access to credit is intimately bound up with identity, status-making, and aspirations of upward mobility. She draws out the deeply precarious nature of both the aspirations and the economic relations of debt which sustain her subjects, revealing the shadowy side of indebtedness and its potential to produce new forms of oppression and disenfranchisement in place of older ones. "Money from Nothing" uniquely captures the lived experience of indebtedness for those many millions who attempt to improve their positions (or merely sustain existing livelihoods) in emerging economies.

The book introduces how we can manage currency options with the Vanna-Volga method. It describes the underlying theories and applications of the Vanna-Volga method in managing currency options of a financial institution, conforming to the Basel III regulatory requirements which demand a high consistency between the valuation and market risk calculation methodologies of financial instruments. The book illustrates with technical details to shed understanding on the major applications, including valuation, volatility recovery, dynamic portfolio replication and value-at-risk. Those who study finance, risk management, quantitative finance or similar areas, as well as practitioners who wish to learn how to valuate, hedge and manage the market risk of currency options with more advanced models and techniques will find the book of invaluable use.

Credit rating agencies play an essential role in the modern financial system and are relied on by creditors and investors on the market. In the recent financial crisis, their power and reliability were often questioned, yet a simple rating downgrade could threaten to bankrupt a whole country. This book examines the governance of credit rating agencies, as expressed by their ability to fairly, ethically and consistently assign higher rates to issuers having lesser default risks. However, factors such as the drive for increased revenue and market share, the inadequate business model, the inadequate methodology of assessing risk, opacity and inadequate internal monitoring have all been identified as critical governance failures for credit agencies. This book explores these issues, and proposes some potential solutions and improvements. This will be of interest to researchers and advanced students of corporate finance, finance, financial economics, risk management, investment management, and banking.

WINNER of the BISA IPEG Book Prize 2015 http://www.bisa-ipeg.org/ipeg-book-prize-2015-winner-announced/ Under the rubric of 'financial inclusion', lending to the poor -in both the global North and global South -has become a highly lucrative and rapidly expanding industry since the 1990s. A key inquiry of this book is what is 'the financial' in which the poor are asked to join. Instead of embracing the mainstream position that financial inclusion is a natural, inevitable and mutually beneficial arrangement, Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry suggests that the structural violence inherent to neoliberalism and credit-led accumulation have created and normalized a reality in which the working poor can no longer afford to live without expensive credit. The book further transcends economic treatments of credit and debt by revealing how the poverty industry is extricably linked to the social power of money, the paradoxes in credit-led accumulation, and 'debtfarism'. The latter refers to rhetorical and regulatory forms of governance that mediate and facilitate the expansion of the poverty industry and the reliance of the poor on credit to augment/replace their wages. Through a historically grounded analysis, the author examines various dimensions of the poverty industry ranging from the credit card, payday loan, and student loan industries in the United States to micro-lending and low-income housing finance industries in Mexico. Providing a much-needed theorization of the politics of debt, Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry has wider implications of the increasing dependence of the poor on consumer credit across the globe, this book will be of very strong interest to students and scholars of Global Political Economy, Finance, Development Studies, Geography, Law, History, and Sociology. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315761954, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lU6PHjyOzU

The past 10 years has provided one of the longest sustained periods of economic growth for many western economies. There are signs that this may all be coming to an end. Japan, the UK and the US are but a small proportion of the developed countries that have experienced major economic downturns and associated bad debt crises in the recent past. Throughout the emerging markets and developing countries, companies are being restructured and, along with them, their finances. There is also an increased recognition around the world that rescuing, rather than liquidating, companies with a viable future is to the benefit of all the stakeholders. The demand for specialist loan workout skills has never been greater.

Corporate distress is characterised by chaos, confusion and crisis. Unless the situation is stabilised and effective steps taken to restore confidence, it culminates in the company's failure. The key to a successful loan workout is to identify the problems accurately and address them early. It is critical that the company's underlying business and financial problems are resolved and not merely the symptoms.

This book provides a practical guide to the entire range of issues relating to loan workouts. It is critical that an institution has appropriate systems, processes and resources to deliver successful rescues, and the reader is taken through the most important issues in this area. The book further provides a framework for a methodical, step-by-step approach to loan workouts. Technical issues involved in restructuring debt and equity, particularly in multi-lender loan workouts, are also explored in detail.

The internet is dramatically transforming the way business is done, particularly for financial services. Digital Finance takes a thoughtful look at how the industry is evolving, and it explains how to integrate concepts of digital finance into existing traditional finance platforms. This book explores what successful companies are doing to maximize their opportunities in this context and offers suggestions on how to introduce digital finance into a firm's structure. Specific strategies for a digital future are presented, alongside numerous case studies that explore key attributes of success. In recognition of the rapidly evolving nature of finance today, Digital Finance is accompanied by a website maintained by the author (PerryBeaumont.com), as well as links to other content with insightful articles, analyses, and opinions. For both practitioners and students of finance, Digital Finance provides a rich context for a better understanding of the landscape of finance today, and lays the foundation for us to process and create the financial innovations of tomorrow.

This edited volume on "Credit, Currency, or Derivatives: Instruments of Global Financial Stability or Crisis" contains original papers that examine various issues concerning the role, the structure and functioning of credit, currency and derivatives instruments and markets as they relate to financial crises. We stress the importance of the inter-linkages of these instruments and markets in promoting or hindering financial stability or crises as well as government policies, on a local and global level. The papers in this volume highlight various aspects of credit and currency instruments and markets, along with their interactions, for the stability of domestic and international financial systems. Particular emphasis is given on the failures of regulatory systems and their implications for systemic financial crises. Also, the papers analyze the costs of financial crises and explore the institutional and economic arrangements that could ameliorate the adverse effects of financial crises in advanced and emerging-market countries.

Praise for

Fair Lending ComplianceIntelligence and Implications for Credit Risk Management

"Brilliant and informative. An in-depth look at innovative approaches to credit risk management written by industry practitioners. This publication will serve as an essential reference text for those who wish to make credit accessible to underserved consumers. It is comprehensive and clearly written."
--The Honorable Rodney E. Hood

"Abrahams and Zhang's timely treatise is a must-read for all those interested in the critical role of credit in the economy. They ably explore the intersection of credit access and credit risk, suggesting a hybrid approach of human judgment and computer models as the necessary path to balanced and fair lending. In an environment of rapidly changing consumer demographics, as well as regulatory reform initiatives, this book suggests new analytical models by which to provide credit to ensure compliance and to manage enterprise risk."
--Frank A. Hirsch Jr., Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP Financial Services Attorney and former general counsel for Centura Banks, Inc.

"This book tackles head on the market failures that our current risk management systems need to address. Not only do Abrahams and Zhang adeptly articulate why we can and should improve our systems, they provide the analytic evidence, and the steps toward implementations. Fair Lending Compliance fills a much-needed gap in the field. If implemented systematically, this thought leadership will lead to improvements in fair lending practices for all Americans."
--Alyssa Stewart Lee, Deputy Director, Urban Markets Initiative The Brookings Institution

"[Fair LendingCompliance]...provides a unique blend of qualitative and quantitative guidance to two kinds of financial institutions: those that just need a little help in staying on the right side of complex fair housing regulations; and those that aspire to industry leadership in profitably and responsibly serving the unmet credit needs of diverse businesses and consumers in America's emerging domestic markets."
--Michael A. Stegman, PhD, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Duncan MacRae '09 and Rebecca Kyle MacRae Professor of Public Policy Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Already in just a decade of existence, cryptocurrencies have been the world's best-performing financial asset, outperforming stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies. This comprehensive yet concise book will enable the reader to learn about the nuts and bolts of cryptocurrencies, including their history, technology, regulations and economics. Additionally, this book teaches sound investment strategies that already work along with the spectrum of risks and returns. This book provides a plain-language primer for beginners worldwide on how to confidently navigate the rapidly evolving world of cryptocurrencies. Beginning by cutting to the chase, the author lists the common burning questions about cryptocurrency and provides succinct answers. Next, he gives an overview of cryptocurrency's underlying technology: blockchain. He then explores the history of cryptocurrency and why it's attracted so much attention. With that foundation, readers will be ready to understand how to invest in cryptocurrency: how cryptocurrency differs from traditional investments such as stocks, how to decide which cryptocurrency to invest in, how to acquire it, how to send and receive it, along with investment strategies. Additionally, legal issues, social implications, cybersecurity risks and the vocabulary of cryptocurrency are also covered, including Bitcoin and the many alternative cryptocurrencies. Written by a journalist-turned-professor, this book's appeal lies in its succinct, informative and easy-to-understand style. It will be of great interest to anyone looking to further their understanding of what cryptocurrency is, why it's a big deal, how to acquire it, how to send and receive it, and investment strategies.

A better development and implementation framework for credit risk scorecards Intelligent Credit Scoring presents a business-oriented process for the development and implementation of risk prediction scorecards. The credit scorecard is a powerful tool for measuring the risk of individual borrowers, gauging overall risk exposure and developing analytically driven, risk-adjusted strategies for existing customers. In the past 10 years, hundreds of banks worldwide have brought the process of developing credit scoring models in-house, while credit scores' have become a frequent topic of conversation in many countries where bureau scores are used broadly. In the United States, the FICO' and Vantage' scores continue to be discussed by borrowers hoping to get a better deal from the banks. While knowledge of the statistical processes around building credit scorecards is common, the business context and intelligence that allows you to build better, more robust, and ultimately more intelligent, scorecards is not. As the follow-up to Credit Risk Scorecards, this updated second edition includes new detailed examples, new real-world stories, new diagrams, deeper discussion on topics including WOE curves, the latest trends that expand scorecard functionality and new in-depth analyses in every chapter. Expanded coverage includes new chapters on defining infrastructure for in-house credit scoring, validation, governance, and Big Data. Black box scorecard development by isolated teams has resulted in statistically valid, but operationally unacceptable models at times. This book shows you how various personas in a financial institution can work together to create more intelligent scorecards, to avoid disasters, and facilitate better decision making. Key items discussed include: * Following a clear step by step framework for development, implementation, and beyond * Lots of real life tips and hints on how to detect and fix data issues * How to realise bigger ROI from credit scoring using internal resources * Explore new trends and advances to get more out of the scorecard Credit scoring is now a very common tool used by banks, Telcos, and others around the world for loan origination, decisioning, credit limit management, collections management, cross selling, and many other decisions. Intelligent Credit Scoring helps you organise resources, streamline processes, and build more intelligent scorecards that will help achieve better results.

Make your money make a difference and enjoy attractive returns Small Money, Big Impact explores and explains the globally growing importance of impact investing. Today, the investor's perspective has become as important as the actual social impact. Based on their experience with over 25 million micro borrowers, the authors delve into the mechanics, considerations, data and strategies that make microloans and impact investing an attractive asset class. From the World Bank to the individual investor, impact investing is attracting more and more attention. Impact investing is a global megatrend and is reshaping the way people invest as pension funds, insurance companies, foundations, family offices and private investors jump on board. This book explains for the first time how it works, why it works and what you should know if you're ready to help change the world. Impact investing has proven over the last 20 years as the first-line offense against crushing poverty. Over two billion people still lack access to basic financial services, which are essential for improving their livelihood. Investors have experienced not only social and environmental impact, but have received attractive, stable and uncorrelated returns for over 15 years. This guide provides the latest insights and methodologies that help you reap the rewards of investing in humanity. * Explore the global impact investing phenomenon * Learn how microloans work, and how they make a difference * Discover why investors are increasingly leaning into impact investing * Consider the factors that inform impact investing decisions Part social movement and part financial strategy, impact investing offers the unique opportunity for investors to power tremendous change with a small amount of money expanding their portfolios as they expand their own global impact. Microfinance allows investors at any level to step in where banks refuse to tread, offering opportunity to those who need it most. Small Money, Big Impact provides the expert guidance you need to optimize the impact on your portfolio and the world.

A history of US involvement in late twentieth-century campaigns against global poverty and how they came to focus on women A War on Global Poverty provides a fresh account of US involvement in campaigns to end global poverty in the 1970s and 1980s. From the decline of modernization programs to the rise of microcredit, Joanne Meyerowitz looks beyond familiar histories of development and explains why antipoverty programs increasingly focused on women as the deserving poor. When the United States joined the war on global poverty, economists, policymakers, and activists asked how to change a world in which millions lived in need. Moved to the left by socialists, social democrats, and religious humanists, they rejected the notion that economic growth would trickle down to the poor, and they proposed programs to redress inequities between and within nations. In an emerging “women in development” movement, they positioned women as economic actors who could help lift families and nations out of destitution. In the more conservative 1980s, the war on global poverty turned decisively toward market-based projects in the private sector. Development experts and antipoverty advocates recast women as entrepreneurs and imagined microcredit—with its tiny loans—as a grassroots solution. Meyerowitz shows that at the very moment when the overextension of credit left poorer nations bankrupt, loans to impoverished women came to replace more ambitious proposals that aimed at redistribution. Based on a wealth of sources, A War on Global Poverty looks at a critical transformation in antipoverty efforts in the late twentieth century and points to its legacies today.

In Britain in the 1990s households containing almost 1.4 million adults and children had their mortgaged home possessed. A far greater number experienced serious mortgage arrears but managed to avoid possession. The emergence of such levels of unsustainable home ownership has consequences for many areas of social and public policy, including: the economy; public health; social security reform; and family policy. This book argues that the emergence of unsustainable owner-occupation is emblematic of broader changes in contemporary society associated with the emergence of what commentators such as Beck and Giddens have characterised as a 'risk society'. Home ownership in a risk society: provides the first systematic overview of the meaning and implications of a body of research work that has hitherto remained largely fragmented; argues that the particular conjunction of events which generated the short-term housing crisis of the early 1990s masked a series of more enduring structural changes which have resulted in unsustainable home ownership becoming a more permanent part of the British socio-economic landscape; uses a wide range of methodological strategies - including in-depth qualitative interviews with adults and children, survey analysis, and the multivariate statistical analysis of large-scale data sets; paints a rich and detailed empirical picture of the causes, socio-economic distribution and social consequences of mortgage arrears and possessions. This broad-ranging book is aimed at students, researchers, policy makers and practitioners with an interest in social policy, sociology, human geography, urban studies, housing studies, public health, economics and finance.

The book introduces how we can manage currency options with the Vanna-Volga method. It describes the underlying theories and applications of the Vanna-Volga method in managing currency options of a financial institution, conforming to the Basel III regulatory requirements which demand a high consistency between the valuation and market risk calculation methodologies of financial instruments. The book illustrates with technical details to shed understanding on the major applications, including valuation, volatility recovery, dynamic portfolio replication and value-at-risk. Those who study finance, risk management, quantitative finance or similar areas, as well as practitioners who wish to learn how to valuate, hedge and manage the market risk of currency options with more advanced models and techniques will find the book of invaluable use.

Financial stability is one of the key tenets of a central bank's functions. Since the financial crisis of 2007-2009, an area of hot debate is the extent to which the central bank should be involved with prudential regulation. This book examines the macro and micro-prudential regulatory frameworks and systems of the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States, Canada and Germany. Drawing on the regulator frameworks of these regions, this book examines the central banks' roles of crisis management, resolution and prudential regulation. Alison Lui compares the institutional structure of the new 'twin-peaks' model in the UK to the Australian model, and the multi-regulatory US model and the single regulatory Canadian model. The book also discusses the extent the central bank in these countries, as well as the ECB, are involved with financial stability, and argues that the institutional architecture and geographical closeness of the Bank of England and Financial Policy Committee give rise to the fear that the UK central bank may become another single super-regulator, which may provide the Bank of England with too much power. As a multi-regional, comparative study on the importance and effectiveness of prudential regulation, this book will be of great use and interest to students and researchers in finance and bank law, economics and banking.

This classic study of German creditbanks was first published in 1930 and even now deserves its place as a fundamental text on banking in Germany. It is a valuable comparative study of one important type of financial institution and represents a detailed survey of Joint Stock Banking in Germany in the pre-war, war and post-war periods upt o 1928.