The London interbank offered rate, or LIBOR, has been called the world’s most important number. Quoted daily across five currencies and seven maturities, the rate underpins hundreds of trillions of dollars in contracts around the world from home mortgage loans to complex derivatives. For U.S. dollar (USD) LIBOR alone, the estimated exposure is approximately $200 trillion.
The Federal Reserve Board, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have issued
supervisory guidance encouraging banks to “cease entering into new contracts that use USD LIBOR as a reference rate as soon as practicable and in any event by December 31, 2021,” noting that new USD LIBOR issuance after 2021 would create safety and soundness risks.
CREFC serves as a member of the Alternative Reference Rates Committee (ARRC), a group of private-market participants convened by the Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In addition, CREFC co-chairs the ARRC’s Securitizations Working Group (SWG) with the Structured Finance Association (SFA). We are focused on helping the CRE finance industry learn about the transition from LIBOR and serving as a platform to create a constructive dialogue on the challenges our industry faces during this critical period of change.
For any questions or if you would like to be involved in a CREFC working group on the LIBOR transition, please feel free to reach out to
Raj Aidasani,
Lisa Pendergast or
Sairah Burki.