The ICMA Covered Bond Investor Council (CBIC) has noted in responses to feedback from investors that it cannot in its proposed transparency standards incorporate the informational requirements of each and every investor but is drawing together common requirements.

The CBIC released the feedback and responses today (Friday). It has been consulting on the planned transparency standards since April 2011 and had already incorporated some feedback from investors in its initial proposals.

The CBIC is now amending the template to reflect various changes resulting from the consultation and an updated version should be ready ahead of the ICMA Covered Bond Investor Council & The Covered Bond Report conference on 10 May in Frankfurt.

(Click here for further information on the event.)

Several national issuer associations said at a European Covered Bond Council plenary meeting last month that they are working on their respective national templates, while Norwegian issuers are expected to start using their national template shortly after having released it in February.

“We are looking forward to seeing some of the national templates filled in,” Nathalie Aubry-Stacey, secretary of the CBIC and director, regulatory policy and market practice at ICMA, told The Covered Bond Report. “The implementation phase is key for investors.”

According to the feedback released today, investors have requested that further programme details and additional fields be added to template being drawn up by the CBIC, but the investor body said that the requirements of every single investor could not be met in a template that is designed to meet investors’ common requirements.

“It is expected that the template represents the needs of investors but also reflects the fragmentation of the European covered bond market – some investors having a focus on the cover pool, others on the general issuer section,” said the CBIC. “It is for each investor to decide what analysis and focus they will take on the data received from issuers.

“The CBIC European transparency standards template attempts to strike a balance between the ever increasing investors information requirements, and ensure that they can receive information from issuers in a similar template, to be able to compare and analyse the information. However investors can ask for all information they deemed relevant during bilateral meetings with issuers.”

The CBIC also said that it acknowledges national differences between European jurisdictions and therefore cannot ask for common definitions of concepts such as loan-to-value ratios, something that had been requested by investors.

“The CBIC has always felt that each jurisdiction should explain their terminology used in the key concepts dedicated sheet (as the FNO [Finance Norway] did in its national template),” it said. “The aim of the project was not to set common definitions for the European covered bond market, but for investors to receive data as well as explanations behind the data so that they are able to perform their own analysis – in a standardised way.”

Disclosure of asset encumbrance levels was also requested by investors, but the CBIC said that there is no agreed definition of this, while noting that there is a field for issuers to report the level of assets pledged to national central banks.

Other information requested by investors – such as information about liquidity buffers and legal maximum LTVs – is already available from other sources, said the CBIC, for example the ECBC’s comparative database (which can be found here), while investors can also request data directly from issuers, it added.

Regarding the accessibility and format of data, the CBIC said that it hopes historical data will be available for investors’ analyses, and that it will review its requirement for half yearly reporting if that proves inadequate.