Within the Internal Ratings-Based (IRB) approach of Basel II it is assumed that idiosyncratic risk has been fully diversified away. The impact of undiversified idiosyncratic risk on portfolio Value-at-Risk can be quantified via a granularity adjustment (GA). We provide an analytic formula for...

We show that the saddle-point approximation method to quantify the impact of undiversified idiosyncratic risk in a credit portfolio is inappropriate in the presence of double default effects. Specifically, we prove that there does not exist an equivalent formula to the granularity adjustment,...

In 2005 the Internal Ratings Based (IRB) approach of "Basel II" was enhanced by a "treatment of double default effects" to account for credit risk mitigation techniques such as ordinary guarantees or credit derivatives. This paper reveals several severe problems of this approach and presents a...

This paper uses a unique data set from credit files of six leading German banks to provide some empirical insights into their rating systems used to classify corporate borrowers. On the basis of the New Basle Capital Accord, which allows banks to use their internal rating systems to compute...