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In public corporate finance, a "critical accounting policy" is a policy of a firm or industry that is considered to have a notably high subjective element and that has a material impact on the organization's financial statements. Such policies are often mandated to be described in detail in specific sections of a company's annual or quarterly reports. Adopting specific accounting policies and procedures (such as Sarbanes-Oxley) is one method organizations use to ensure adequate controls and transparency in financial reporting and minimize the risk of fraud.
Many accounting policies necessarily involve the subjective valuation of different items in order to give observers the best possible "snapshot" of a company's finances by looking at a single balance sheet or profit and loss statement. For example, a bank that has just made a lot of new loans would look good on one report, but if many of those borrowers later failed to repay, then a subsequent report would look very bad. So generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) would require the bank management (and not the accountants) to estimate how many borrowers would fail to repay and to include those losses alongside the new loans. While there are many situations common to almost all companies where management must make subjective accounting entries, critical accounting policies are often those particular to an industry or company and are judged to be even more subjective than normal.
One of the key reasons many investors and analysts pay attention to critical accounting policies is that their subjective nature is believed to be ripe for abuse through creative accounting, especially slush fund accounting. In slush fund accounting, excess earnings from a good quarter or year are hidden by changing the subjective element of a critical accounting policy. The "hidden funds" can then be put back into the reported profit in a bad quarter. Companies do this because of the general belief that the ideal company is one that consistently and smoothly increases earnings. For example, a clothing store does not show the profit on all the sales it made in the current quarter because it knows that some of those clothes will be returned later and it will have to give back the money. To smooth earnings, in a good quarter, managers can say that they believe that the amount of return will be high. Then, when they have a bad quarter, they can say that they overestimated the value of returns and add the surplus back into that quarter's profit.
Some examples of critical accounting policies are:
An interest-only loan is a loan in which the borrower pays only the interest for some or all of the term, with the principal balance unchanged during the interest-only period. At the end of the interest-only term the borrower must renegotiate another interest-only mortgage, pay the principal, or, if previously agreed, convert the loan to a principal-and-interest payment (amortizing) loan at the borrower's option.
An endowment mortgage is a mortgage loan arranged on an interest-only basis where the capital is intended to be repaid by one or more endowment policies. The phrase "endowment mortgage" is used mainly in the United Kingdom by lenders and consumers to refer to this arrangement and is not a legal term.
Underwriting (UW) services are provided by some large financial institutions, such as banks, insurance companies and investment houses, whereby they guarantee payment in case of damage or financial loss and accept the financial risk for liability arising from such guarantee. An underwriting arrangement may be created in a number of situations including insurance, issues of security in a public offering, and bank lending, among others. The person or institution that agrees to sell a minimum number of securities of the company for commission is called the underwriter.
In accounting, "off-balance-sheet" (OBS), or incognito leverage, usually describes an asset, debt, or financing activity not on the company's balance sheet. Total return swaps are an example of an off-balance-sheet item.
Negative equity is a deficit of owner's equity, occurring when the value of an asset used to secure a loan is less than the outstanding balance on the loan. In the United States, assets with negative equity are often referred to as being "underwater", and loans and borrowers with negative equity are said to be "upside down".
A shared appreciation mortgage often abbreviated as "SAM" is a mortgage in which the purchaser of a home shared a percentage of the appreciation in the home's value with the lender. In return, the lender agrees to charge an interest rate that is lower than the prevailing market interest rate. The lender agrees to receive some or all of the repayment of the loan in the form of a share of the increase in value of the property.
Payment protection insurance (PPI), also known as credit insurance, credit protection insurance, or loan repayment insurance, is an insurance product that enables consumers to ensure repayment of credit if the borrower dies, becomes ill, disabled, loses a job, or faces other circumstances that may prevent them from earning income to service the debt. It is not to be confused with income protection insurance, which is not specific to a debt but covers any income. PPI was widely sold by banks and other credit providers as an add-on to the loan or overdraft product.
Credit rationing by definition is limiting the lenders of the supply of additional credit to borrowers who demand funds at a set quoted rate by the financial institution. It is an example of market failure, as the price mechanism fails to bring about equilibrium in the market. It should not be confused with cases where credit is simply "too expensive" for some borrowers, that is, situations where the interest rate is deemed too high. With credit rationing, the borrower would like to acquire the funds at the current rates, and the imperfection is the absence of supply from the financial institutions, despite willing borrowers. In other words, at the prevailing market interest rate, demand exceeds supply, but lenders are willing neither to lend enough additional funds to satisfy demand, nor to raise the interest rate they charge borrowers because they are already maximising profits, or are using a cautious approach to continuing to meet their capital reserve requirements.
Requires updating to reflect the current Income Tax Act and the growth of MICs that trade on the TSX.
Mortgage fraud refers to an intentional misstatement, misrepresentation, or omission of information relied upon by an underwriter or lender to fund, purchase, or insure a loan secured by real property.
A mortgage loan or simply mortgage, in civil law jurisdictions known also as a hypothec loan, is a loan used either by purchasers of real property to raise funds to buy real estate, or by existing property owners to raise funds for any purpose while putting a lien on the property being mortgaged. The loan is "secured" on the borrower's property through a process known as mortgage origination. This means that a legal mechanism is put into place which allows the lender to take possession and sell the secured property to pay off the loan in the event the borrower defaults on the loan or otherwise fails to abide by its terms. The word mortgage is derived from a Law French term used in Britain in the Middle Ages meaning "death pledge" and refers to the pledge ending (dying) when either the obligation is fulfilled or the property is taken through foreclosure. A mortgage can also be described as "a borrower giving consideration in the form of a collateral for a benefit (loan)".
A structured investment vehicle (SIV) is a non-bank financial institution established to earn a credit spread between the longer-term assets held in its portfolio and the shorter-term liabilities it issues. They are simple credit spread lenders, frequently "lending" by investing in securitizations, but also by investing in corporate bonds and funding by issuing commercial paper and medium term notes, which were usually rated AAA until the onset of the financial crisis. They did not expose themselves to either interest rate or currency risk and typically held asset to maturity. SIVs differ from asset-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations in that they are permanently capitalized and have an active management team.
The American subprime mortgage crisis was a multinational financial crisis that occurred between 2007 and 2010 that contributed to the 2007–2008 global financial crisis. The crisis led to a severe economic recession, with millions losing their jobs and many businesses going bankrupt. The U.S. government intervened with a series of measures to stabilize the financial system, including the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
Mortgage underwriting is the process a lender uses to determine if the risk of offering a mortgage loan to a particular borrower under certain parameters is acceptable. Most of the risks and terms that underwriters consider fall under the three C's of underwriting: credit, capacity and collateral.
Forbearance, in the context of a mortgage process, is a special agreement between the lender and the borrower to delay a foreclosure. The literal meaning of forbearance is "holding back". This is also referred to as mortgage moratorium.
This article provides background information regarding the subprime mortgage crisis. It discusses subprime lending, foreclosures, risk types, and mechanisms through which various entities involved were affected by the crisis.
Profit risk is a risk management tool that focuses on understanding concentrations within the income statement and assessing the risk associated with those concentrations from a net income perspective.
Securitization is the financial practice of pooling various types of contractual debt such as residential mortgages, commercial mortgages, auto loans or credit card debt obligations and selling their related cash flows to third party investors as securities, which may be described as bonds, pass-through securities, or collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). Investors are repaid from the principal and interest cash flows collected from the underlying debt and redistributed through the capital structure of the new financing. Securities backed by mortgage receivables are called mortgage-backed securities (MBS), while those backed by other types of receivables are asset-backed securities (ABS).
The mortgage industry of the United Kingdom has traditionally been dominated by building societies, the first of which opened in Birmingham in 1775. But since the 1970s, the share of new mortgage loans market held by building societies has declined substantially. Between 1977 and 1987, the share fell drastically from 96% to 66%, and that of banks and other institutions rose from 3% to 36%. The major lenders include building societies, banks, specialized mortgage corporations, insurance companies and pension funds. During the four years after the financial crisis of 2008, the UK mutual sector provided approximately 80% of net lending to the housing market. There are currently over 200 significant separate financial organizations supplying mortgage loans to house buyers in Britain, with Lloyds Bank and the Nationwide Building Society having the largest market share.
The 2007–2008 financial crisis, or the global financial crisis (GFC), was the most severe worldwide economic crisis since the Great Depression. Predatory lending in the form of subprime mortgages targeting low-income homebuyers, excessive risk-taking by global financial institutions, a continuous buildup of toxic assets within banks, and the bursting of the United States housing bubble culminated in a "perfect storm", which led to the Great Recession.