Readjusting Historical Credit Ratings : using Ordered Logistic Regression and Principal ComponentAnalysis

Sammanfattning: Readjusting Historical Credit Ratings using Ordered Logistic Re-gression and Principal Component Analysis The introduction of the Basel II Accord as a regulatory document for creditrisk presented new concepts of credit risk management and credit risk mea-surements, such as enabling international banks to use internal estimates ofprobability of default (PD), exposure at default (EAD) and loss given default(LGD). These three measurements is the foundation of the regulatory capitalcalculations and are all in turn based on the bank’s internal credit ratings. Ithas hence been of increasing importance to build sound credit rating modelsthat possess the capability to provide accurate measurements of the credit riskof borrowers. These statistical models are usually based on empirical data andthe goodness-of-fit of the model is mainly depending on the quality and sta-tistical significance of the data. Therefore, one of the most important aspectsof credit rating modeling is to have a sufficient number of observations to bestatistically reliable, making the success of a rating model heavily dependenton the data collection and development state.The main purpose of this project is to, in a simple but efficient way, createa longer time series of homogeneous data by readjusting the historical creditrating data of one of Svenska Handelsbanken AB’s credit portfolios. Thisreadjustment is done by developing ordered logistic regression models thatare using independent variables consisting of macro economic data in separateways. One model uses macro economic variables compiled into principal com-ponents, generated through a Principal Component Analysis while all othermodels uses the same macro economic variables separately in different com-binations. The models will be tested to evaluate their ability to readjust theportfolio as well as their predictive capabilities.