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17 October 2013

Credit Value Adjustment

Credit Value Adjustment or CVA has been around for a long time, however, with the introduction of the accounting standard IFRS13, this year there is a requirement to understand it a bit better. The new standard requires the CVA component to be separately reported from the fair value of a...

Credit Value Adjustment or CVA has been around for a long time, however, with the introduction of the accounting standard IFRS13, this year there is a requirement to understand it a bit better. The new standard requires the CVA component to be separately reported from the fair value of a financial instrument.

CVA is the difference between the risk-free portfolio value and the true portfolio value that takes into account the possibility of a counterparty’s default. In other words, CVA is the market value of counterparty credit risk.

The big question is whether it will be material enough for most organizations to worry about; given the potential complexity around its calculation, most would hope not.

There is no doubt if you have cross-currency swaps the impact of CVA is likely to be material. However most companies that use these instruments would normally have a sophisticated treasury management system that would do this calculation at the push of a button.

Most other organizations however will probably be relying on spreadsheets to capture and record their treasury transactions and will lack the ability to calculate financial instrument valuations let alone the more complex CVA.

Will you need to worry about CVA is the question? Most do not know there is a requirement, let alone how it will be calculated and this is true of the audit profession as much as the corporate world.

Whether it is material or not may be the question, however, it is likely that even if it is not material there may be a requirement to prove this. At the end of the day the audit profession will decide whether organizations will need to calculate CVA or not. In the meantime we are keeping a watching brief on both the banks’ ability to provide the CVA component and the audit firms as to whether they will force organizations to calculate it.

Watch this space.

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