A repo or repurchase Agreement is an instrument of money market. Usually reserve bank (federal bank in U.S) and commercial banks involve in repo transactions but not restricted to these two. Individuals, banks, financial institutes can also participate in repurchase agreement.
Repo is a collateralized lending i.e. the banks which borrow money from Reserve Bank to meet short term needs have to sell securities, usually bonds to Reserve Bank with an agreement to repurchase the same at a predetermined rate and date. In this way for the lender of the cash (usually Reserve Bank) the securities sold by the borrower are the collateral against default risk and for the borrower of cash (usually commercial banks) cash received from the lender is the collateral.
Reserve bank charges some interest rate on the cash borrowed by banks. This rate is usually less than the interest rate on bonds as the borrowing is collateral. This interest rate is called ‘repo rate’. The lender of securities is said to be doing repo whereas the lender of cash is said to be doing ‘reverse repo’.
In a reverse repo Reserve Bank borrows money from banks by lending securities. The interest paid by Reserve Bank in this case is called reverse repo rate.
Borrower of funds is called as seller of repo and lender of funds is called as buyer of repo. When the term of the loan is for one day it is known as an overnight repo and if it is for more than one day it is called a term repo.
The forward clean price of bonds is set at a level which is different from the spot clean price by adjusting the difference between repo rate and coupon earned on the security.
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