Covered bonds – Issue and supervision, exposures

Briefing 24-01-2020

Covered bonds are debt securities issued by credit institutions and secured by a pool of mortgage loans or credit towards the public sector. They are characterised further by the double protection offered to bondholders, the segregation of assets in their cover pool, over-collateralisation, and their strict supervisory frameworks. Currently, their issuance is concentrated in five Member States. National regulatory regimes vary widely in terms of supervision and composition of the cover pool. Lastly, despite benefiting from preferential treatment under the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR), they share no common definition, which can lead to different securities benefiting from this treatment. To remedy this, the Commission has adopted proposals for, on the one hand, a directive, which would lay down investor protection rules and provide common definitions, and on the other, a regulation, which would amend the CRR with regard to covered bond exposures. Parliament voted in plenary on 18 April 2019 to adopt the texts agreed in trilogue. After linguistic corrections, Parliament approved corrigenda and the two acts were signed on 27 November 2019. Third edition. The 'EU Legislation in Progress' briefings are updated at key stages throughout the legislative procedure.