Obligations foncières of Compagnie de Financement Foncier are rated by Standard & Poor’s (S&P), Moody’s and Scope Ratings.

The rating of Compagnie de Financement Foncier not only reflects the stringent legal and regulatory framework but also the additional commitments it has made to investors, taken into account by the rating agencies.

Compagnie de Financement Foncier is committed to maintain an overcollateralization level on its covered bond program commensurate with a AAA rating from S&P Global Ratings.

Indeed Compagnie de Financement is required to effect management requirements allowing it to achieve overcollateralization above the regulatory minimum and minimize its risks:

Credit and counterparty risks

Asset purchasing criteria by category

Although regulations require that a société de crédit foncier invest only in high quality assets, Compagnie de Financement Foncier implements additional asset purchasing criteria for each asset category, so as to limit its exposure to credit risk.
Compagnie de Financement Foncier selects the assets that it wishes to acquire based on their rating, probability of default, score at origination, expected loss and any hedging of assets, as well as yield curves. The assets that meet the Compagnie de Financement Foncier’s criteria are then purchased at a price determined by the previous study.
Furthermore, Compagnie de Financement Foncier replacement values have very good external credit ratings. The minimum acceptable credit rating for each asset (except for intragroup assets) depends on the investment horizon and must meet the minimum rating criteria of each of the two main agencies, as shown below:

Scope Ratings applies no predefined minimum rating. The analysis is done on a case by case basis.

Limiting counterparty risk

Crédit Foncier Group’s risk policy specifies per-counterparty limits and Compagnie de Financement Foncier observes these limits in its decision process.

For its hedging transactions and the company executes a framework agreement with each of its counterparties, with asymmetrical collateralisation and other specific terms set forth in an appendix to this agreement.

Each counterparty agrees to pay Compagnie de Financement Foncier on a daily basis (or on a weekly basis for some of them) depending on the counterparty’s rating a security deposit equal to its net debt position, with no compensation for this.

On 9 January 2013, Compagnie de Financement Foncier made the following committments:

• in the event of a counterparty’s downgrade rating below a certain level, new circumstance allowing Compagnie de Financement Foncier to terminate a swap contract: committment to find under sixty days an equivalent coverage or to have the necessary overcollateralisation to set off the risk that has become uncovered for swaps overpassing 5% of obligations foncières outstanding;
• in the event of BPCE’s downgrade rating below A1 (Standard & Poor’s rating): committment to put in order under sixty days non-compliant swap contracts and whose outstandings overpass 5% of the privileged resources, or to replace the counterparties.

Currency and interest rate risks

Systematically hedged variable-rate assets and liabilities

Management of interest rate risk

Compagnie de Financement Foncier is committed to keeping its interest rate gaps within the specific limits set for each period and to correct any excess observed by the following quarter:

No currency risk

Compagnie de Financement Foncier prohibits any open foreign exchange positions. As such, all asset purchase or refinancing transactions that are not denominated in euros are systematically hedged against currency risk.

In practice, Compagnie de Financement Foncier limits its residual currency positions to €3m by currency with a €5m cap for all currencies.

Hedging liquidity risks

The legislative constraints require that sociétés de crédit foncier ensure that, at all times, all of their cash flow requirements are hedged for a period of 180 days, Compagnie de Financement Foncier guarantees that it always maintains enough liquidity to honour its privileged liability commitments with no need for new resources for 6 months in a run-off scenario (i.e. with no new activity).

The high quality of Compagnie de Financement Foncier’s assets, and in particular of its eligible securities and receivables, give it immediate access to funding from central banks, such as the ECB for large amounts.

Thus, the Company’s cash position is sufficient at any given time to meet the contractual payments on its privileged debt over the coming twelve months.

With the volume of Compagnie de Financement Foncier’s assets eligible for the European Central Bank’s liquidity facility (€9 bn as of December 31, 2020), it could service its payments and build up its liquidity for much longer than the 6 months to which it is committed.

Compagnie de Financement Foncier also limits the average maturity between its assets and its overall liabilities to two years at most.

Rating agencies’ reports