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We're joined by Chris Plumb and Jie Liang to discuss Private Equity CFOs, including the recent Astrea 7 transaction. Disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic led to temporary performance fluctuations in the outstanding Astrea transactions we rate. Rising rates and market volatility may affect returns on the underlying private equity assets in the near term.

Related Article - Presale: Astrea 7 Pte. Ltd.

Our host, Jim Manzi, is joined by U.S. CLO sector lead Stephen Anderberg, Director Daniel Hu, and research analyst Evan Gunter to do a deep dive into the history of U.S. CLO defaults. Of the 16,000+ CLO tranches that we have rated since the mid-late 1990s, there have been 50 that defaulted. We go over some notable observations and trends (e.g., rating categories, timings, etc.) in our historical data. We also discuss how we look at current tranches that are candidates for a potential default, and what a typical "path to default" might look like.

Related Article - CLO Spotlight: U.S. CLO Defaults As Of March 17, 2022

We're joined by Doug Paterson to discuss buy now, pay later (BNPL) lending, a form of consumer credit where goods and services are paid for in installments over a period typically less than 12 months, instead of being paid for in full at the time of purchase. We discuss how BNPL lending has evolved from traditional consumer financing; the market's rapid 60%-70% annual growth and the stricter regulation coming; and the regulatory and operational risks, among others, that we would consider if we were to rate a BNPL-backed securitization in Europe.

Related Article - Buy Now, Pay Later Securitizations: What Are The Risks?

Host Tom Schopflocher and S&P Global Ratings analyst Amy Martin discuss the U.S. auto loan ABS market, which roared back to life in 2021 with issuance at the highest level since 2005. Learn about vintage-specific performance trends, the relationship between unemployment and losses, loan-term trends, and more.

Related Articles:

U.S. Auto Loan ABS Tracker: Full Year And December 2021 Performance

Global Structured Finance 2022 Outlook

Expanding on our covered bond market coverage, Casper Andersen joins us to provide some insights into the growing Norwegian And Finnish markets, which are the 10th- and 14-largest in Europe, respectively. We give an overview of each market's adopted legal frameworks, key characteristics, and collateral securing their covered pools. We also give our ratings outlooks for each market.

Related Article: Norwegian And Finnish Covered Bond Market Insights 2022

Our Latin American team joins us this week to discuss the 2022 outlook for the Latin American Structured Finance market. We expect flat issuance relative to last year and stable collateral performance, continuing the trends from 2021. We go into more detail about the major regional markets and asset classes that we expect will be most active in the coming year, as well as delve into the major risk factors we identified across the market.

Related Article - Latin America Structured Finance Outlook 2022: Expectations Are For Flat Issuance And Stable Collateral Performance

We're joined by credit analysts Antonio Farina and Marta Escutia to discuss sustainable covered bond market, which has been expanding over the last couple of years. Overall, we view the lack of supply, rather than demand, is constraining further growth in sustainable issuance. We discuss in detail the different factors contributing to this lack of supply. We also discuss our outlook for the market going forward.

Host Tom Schopflocher discusses the economic factors supporting the U.S. housing market and what could happen to the record high pace of home price appreciation should they change course. Based on these factors, we carried out a statistical study to determine the likelihood of a sudden correction in home prices. We also ran a scenario analysis to understand how a sharp drop in home prices might impact ratings of certain U.S. non-agency RMBS.

Credit analyst Doug Paterson joins us this week to discuss the rise of electric vehicles (EVs) in European auto ABS transactions as the transition to EVs from internal combustion ones is expected to accelerate. We discuss some of the drivers behind the transition, price depreciation of EVs and how it affects our analysis of auto ABS deals, and our thoughts on the share of EVs in securitized pools increasing and the possibility of a "green" auto deal.

Director Jay Srivats joins our host Tom Schopflocher this week to give an update on the U.S. timeshare securitization sector. We discuss the consolidation trends in the sector this year and their impact on issuance volume, the adjustments to our base-case default assumptions in our rating analysis in response to the pandemic, and the sector's overall stable ratings performance despite pandemic-related increases in deferrals and delinquencies.