Factors leading to Collapse
One of the main reasons of collapse of AIG insurance was its division AIG Financial Products. The division used to sell insurance against the investments which can go wrong. Examples of such investments can be increase in the increase rates which can affect the investor. However in the early 2000 AIGFP started investing in new products like CDO.
CDO are collateralized debt obligation which bundle together different types of debt. Many firms which were involved in mortgage backed securities created CDOs and sold them in market.
In order to make money AIGFP started insuring these CDOs against default using another financial product known as CDS (Credit Default Swap). Firm estimated that paying out in CDS had a very less probability and the income received from insurance was high. Thus they stated using this concept and the income of the division rose. From revenue of $737 million in about 5 years the revenue increased to around $3 billion (Bradford, 2008).
However for many CDO products on which the firm sold products there was a large of mortgage securities which contained debt of subprime category. During the 2008 crisis these loans defaulted and as a result the AIG had to pay a huge amount which they weren’t expecting. Thus they ended up losing around $25 billion.
Majority of the loss came from the firm selling the CDS. AIG was accruing unpaid debts—collateral it owed its credit default swap partners, but did not have to hand over due to the agreements’ collateral provisions. But when AIG’s credit rating was lowered, those collateral provisions kicked in—and AIG suddenly owed its counterparties a great deal of money.
AIG also lost money due to their issues in their accounting division. This also lowered the rating of AIG. As a result of this firm had to post more collateral for the bonds it had issued and thus it increased the problems for AIG.
On September 15, 2008 firm was downgraded by all the three major rating agencies (S&P, Moody’s and Fitch). The rating was downgraded to below AA- which earlier AAA. This led to firm having to post more collateral on CDS. The amount of collateral which had to be posted due to call on their CDS position increased to $32 billion and there was a shortfall of $12.4 billion by the firm. This event can be said to type of bank run.
Firm has written CDS of value approximately $500 billion but its CDS in mortgages like residential and commercial mortgages, home equity loans were more troublesome and their value was around $78 billion.
Firm securities lending business also contributed to the loss of the firm. Firm lost approximately $21 billion in their security lending business and this also increased their losses. Securities lending is a common financial transaction where one institution borrows a security from another and gives a deposit of collateral, usually cash, to the lender.
Companies that lend securities usually take that cash collateral and invest it in something short term and relatively safe. But AIG invested heavily in high-yield—and high-risk—assets. This included assets backed by subprime residential mortgage loans. In the run-up to September 2008, AIG securities lending business grew substantially, going from less than $30 billion in 2007 to $88.4 billion in the third quarter of 2008.
The borrowers of a security can typically terminate the transaction at any time by returning the security to the lender and getting their collateral back. But since AIG had invested primarily in longer-term assets with liquidity that could vary substantially in the short term, returning cash collateral on short notice was not so easy (Morgenson, 2008).
The values of the securities underlying these transactions were falling, due to falling real estate prices and higher foreclosures, and AIG did not have enough other liquid assets to meet all the redemption requests. And just as a possibly crumbling bank can lead depositors to withdraw their cash in a hurry, AIG’s weakened stance led even more securities lending counterparties to return their securities and ask for their cash—which left AIG worse off still