BASEL III Counterparty Risk and Credit Value Adjustment: Impact of the Wrong-way Risk

During the financial crisis of 2007 through 2010, BIS estimated that two-thirds of the loss of the financial institutions was due to credit valuation adjustment (CVA). The CVA is the marked-to-market price of credit products which involve counterparties. Hence, in BASEL III, banks are required to capture and allocate CVA capital and wrong-way risk (WWR). In this paper, we show that BASEL III CVA capital charge increases as the credit rating of the counterparty deteriorates. We also show that the extreme WWR can increase the BASEL III CVA charge by 30 times in Davis and Pistorius model.