Counterparty risk and funding: immersion and beyond

Abstract

A basic reduced-form counterparty risk modeling approach hinges on a standard immersion hypothesis between a reference filtration and the filtration progressively enlarged by the default times of the two parties, also involving the continuity of some of the data at default time. This basic approach is too restrictive for application to credit derivatives, which are characterized by strong wrong-way risk, i.e. adverse dependence between the exposure and the credit riskiness of the counterparties, and gap risk, i.e. slippage between the portfolio and its collateral during the so called cure period that separates default from liquidation. This paper shows how a suitable extension of the basic approach can be devised so that it can be applied in dynamic copula models of counterparty risk on credit derivatives. More generally, this method is applicable in any marked default times intensity setup satisfying a suitable integrability condition. The integrability condition expresses that no mass is lost in a related measure change. The changed probability measure is not needed algorithmically. All one needs in practice is an explicit expression for the intensities of the marked default times.