새로운 담보거래 방식에 관한 연구 - 커버드본드 발행제도에 관하여 -

Volume of Korean housing loan market has amounted to KRW 221 trillion as of the end of 2007. Korean financial institutions have been seeking for a more efficient way to refinance their mortgage assets and become interested in issuance of covered bonds as a new financing method. Covered bonds market is well developed in European countries, such as Germany, Spain and United Kingdom. Covered bonds are senior debt instruments secured by a ring-fenced pool of cover assets in which investors have a preferential claim in the event issuer defaults. These bonds resemble mortgage-backed securities but covered bonds are issued or guaranteed by the originator. They are, therefore, obligations of the issuer. If the collateral is insufficient to repay all covered bond claims, covered bond creditors rank pari passu with senior unsecured creditors. Due to this enhancement, covered bonds are typically assigned higher credit ratings and trade at lower yields than senior, unsecured bonds of the same issuer. Although Korea has no legislation governing covered bonds, it might be possible that Korean financial institutions issue bonds similar to covered bonds under the current Korean law. However, the legislation regarding covered bonds will be finally required to issue covered bonds with low transaction costs and no legal ambiguity. In enacting such law, given Korea's wide range of recent experiene on asset-backed securitizations, it will be desirable to adopt a SPV model used in UK regulated covered bonds rather than an integrated model used in German Pfandbriefe and to tailor for the covered bonds a disclosure system and public supervision with respect to the asset-backed securitization.