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Yesterday the UK Treasury announced that it plans to offer protection against credit losses to banks above a first-loss threashold - in effect, taking the senior tranche of a synthetic CDO - in exchange for a fee.
The announcement says that UK banks (including UK subsidiaries of foreign banks) will be able to buy this protection. The assets must be on the bank's balance sheet and can include residential and commercial property loans, structured credit assets, asset-backed securities, corporate loans and "any closely related hedges" - presumably meaning credit default swaps providing exposure to these assets.
However, the statement does say how the "protection" will be documented - whether though a guaranty, credit default swap or insurance policy. Nor does it say how losses will be defined and what credit events will trigger a protection payment.


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As an update to this article, it appears that the Treasury's current thinking is that this protection will take the form of an insurance policy and not a guarantee or swap. In other words, if losses reach above the threashold, the bank would be able to make a claim for compensation to the Treasury.