In theory the potential for credit risk diversification for banks could be substantial. Portfolio diversification is driven broadly by two characteristics: the degree to which systematic risk factors are correlated with each other and the degree of dependence individual firms have to the...

This paper considers a simple model of credit risk and derives the limit distribution of losses under different assumptions regarding the structure of systematic risk and the nature of exposure or firm heterogeneity. We derive fat-tailed correlated loss distributions arising from Gaussian risk...