Lately some investors have become a little concerned about Canadian and Norwegian covered bonds on the back of the major oil price drop of the last few months, write Crédit Agricole CIB covered bond analysts Florian Eichert and Stephan Dorner. 

Norway came top out of six countries in a Moody’s ranking of how strong different jurisdictions are with respect to eligibility criteria for cover pool assets based on a combination of covered bond law and market practice, while Sweden was first taking into account only the covered bond law.

A new Norwegian Act on Financial Institutions being considered by parliament will amend the country’s covered bond framework so that covered bond issuers are treated the same as banks in the event of insolvency, and will also repeal Norway’s securitisation law.

DNB Boligkreditt sold a Eu500m (Nkr4.23bn) seven year floating rate covered bond last Friday (7 November), building on reverse enquiries to open a new FRN maturity after having tapped a five year through 2014.

Members of the SpareBank 1 alliance in Norway are setting up their own covered bond issuers as a back-up to SpareBank 1 Boligkreditt (SpaBol) because of large exposure limit regulation.

Moody’s upgraded Eika Boligkreditt mortgage covered bonds from Aa2 to Aa1 on Thursday of last week.

A brief payment delay on a covered bond from Norway’s Sør Boligkreditt that matured last month and which was due to an operational error has no credit impact and is extremely unlikely to happen again, according to Moody’s, which rates the issuer’s covered bonds Aaa.

ESMA released final draft RTS on central clearing requirements for OTC derivatives on Wednesday of last week (1 October) that featured several concessions to the covered bond industry, but the regulator did not make all the requested changes and related changes to Norwegian and Swedish laws are now in store.

Payment on a Nkr30m (Eu3.66m) maturing covered bond of Sør Boligkreditt, the issuer of Norway’s Sparebanken Sør, was delayed by three days over last weekend because an amendment to the structure three years ago was not correctly registered in a payment system, according to an official at the issuer.

DNB Boligkreditt priced a Eu1.25bn (Nkr10.2bn) five year covered bond at 3bp through mid-swaps on Monday, making for a favourable if modest return for the Norwegian issuer after an absence of 10 months, during which it has progressively tapped an FRN up to Eu850m and raised a record amount domestically.