(Bloomberg) -- Bank of Nova Scotia is sounding out investors on a significant risk-transfer transaction that would be linked to a portfolio of corporate loans, according to people familiar with the matter.
The potential deal is connected to about $5 billion of US dollar loans, the people said, speaking on condition they not be named because the matter is still private. The size of the SRT is roughly 7% of that amount, around $350 million, they said. A Scotiabank representative declined to comment.
SRTs allow banks to manage regulatory capital constraints by offloading credit risk to other investors while keeping the assets on their balance sheets — freeing up room to provide new loans.
In SRTs, a bank usually obtains default protection for as much as 15% of the value of the loans. Investors agree to absorb some losses if the loans go bad, and in return they receive yields that frequently top 10%.
Terms of Scotiabank’s transaction are subject to change depending on discussions with investors, the people said.
Banks in Canada have been selling SRTs as the country’s regulators remain near the forefront in implementing of many of the Basel III reforms around bank capital. Earlier this year, Toronto-Dominion Bank, one of Scotiabank’s larger Canadian rivals, went ahead with an SRT backed by a pool of $3 billion of loans. It was placed with a group of investors led by Blackstone Inc., Bloomberg reported in October.
In the US, Bank of America Corp. has been discussing an SRT deal linked to $1 billion of corporate loans, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News in November.
Loans tied to SRTs have reached about $1 trillion globally, with such deals running at a record pace for the fourth straight year, according to data compiled by Chorus Capital Management.
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