Association of Swedish Covered Bond issuers

The Association of Swedish Covered Bond issuers (ASCB) is the voice of the Swedish covered bond industry.

The Swedish Covered Bond Issuance Act enables Swedish banks and credit market enterprises, which have been granted a specific licence by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority to issue covered bonds secured by a pool of mortgage credits and/or public sector credits.

There are twelve issuers of covered bonds on the Swedish market: Bluestep, Borgo, Danske Hypotek, Handelsbanken/Stadshypotek, Landshypotek, Länsförsäkringar Hypotek, Nordea/Nordea Hypotek, SBAB/Swedish Covered Bond Corporation, SEB, Skandiabanken, Sparbanken Skåne, Swedbank/Swedbank Hypotek.

The Swedish covered bonds market

The Swedish covered bond market has a long history starting with the first establishment of a mortgage bank in 1861. This marked the beginning of the use of long bond issuance for financing of mortgage and public loan books. The mortgage bond market developed further after the deregulations of the financial markets during the 1980's where the formal standards for market making and issuance formats, the benchmark tap-market largely in place today, were established. Since then, specific legislation for covered bond has been introduced and adjusted to comply with both the EU Covered Bonds Directive (CBD) and the standards required for preferential treatment under the EU Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR).

The domestic bond market has withstood the external shocks of the last decades by remaining open and providing functionality to issuers and investors in terms of two-way pricing on outstanding benchmarks including repos. The total value of Swedish covered bonds outstanding exceeds EUR 230 billion.

All Swedish covered bonds issued after the implementation of CBD in Swedish law in July 2022 can be labelled “European Covered Bond Premium”, as the Swedish Covered Bond Issuance Act requires compliance with the standards set by CRR article 129.