U.S. Structured Finance Markets: Recent Recovery,
Post-Crisis Developments, and Ongoing Regulatory Uncertainties

Abstract

In this article, the authors review the recent activity in U.S. structured finance markets and offer some comments on the changes in certain structured finance products resulting from the global credit crisis. They believe that these changes have helped foster an environment consistent with the return of economically legitimate uses of fundamentally sound structured financing techniques. The authors discuss specific changes in the market for collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) as an illustrative example. They also discuss the potential impact of various ongoing regulatory initiatives that may affect (perhaps significantly) the near- and long-term prospects for U.S. structured finance products and markets. The data currently indicate renewed investor interest in many of these products, and in the authors’ view, the post-crisis changes in the design and documentation of these products together with heightened investor awareness and better access to information suggest that such interest is not merely irrational yield-chasing. Yet, the ongoing regulatory uncertainty poses significant potential threat to the future of the U.S. structured finance market. Many of the possible dangers arising from pending or proposed regulations seem, moreover, to be unintended consequences of rules that were not specifically aimed at structured finance (e.g., the Volcker Rule). Unless regulators address those unintended consequences (and perhaps some intended ones), the prospects for the return of a vibrant and well-functioning structured finance market to facilitate legitimate risk transfer and asset funding may be much dimmer than recent market experiences otherwise suggest.