The South African fixed interest rate market has historically had very little liquidity beyond 15 - 20 years. Most financial institutions are currently prepared to quote and trade interest rate risk up to a maximum term of 30 years. Any trades beyond 30 years usually attract very onerous spreads and raise relevant questions regarding an appropriate level of mid-rates. However, there are many South African entities whose business involves taking on exposure to interest rates beyond 30 years, such as life insurance companies and pension funds. These entities have historically used very traditional approaches to hedging their interest rate exposures across the whole term structure and have typically done little to gain any further protection. We can generalise the problems faced by any entity exposed to long term interest rate risk in South Africa: 1. The inadequacy of traditional matching methods (i.e. immunisation and bucketing) to cope with the long term interest rate risks. 2. The non-observability of interest rate data beyond the maximum term in the yield curve. Associated with this is the inability to adequately quantify interest rate risk. 3. The lack of liquidity in long term interest rate markets. Associated with this is the inability to adequately hedge long term interest rate risk. We examine various traditional approaches to matching / hedging interest rate risk using information available at observable / tradable terms on the nominal yield curve. We then look at the reasons why these approaches are not suitable for hedging long term interest rate risk. Some modern methods to forecast and hedge long term interest rate risks are then examined and the possibility of their use in managing long term interest risk is explored. On the back of these investigations, we propose a number of possible yield curve extrapolation procedures and methodology for performing calibrations. Using some general theoretical hedging results, we perform a case study which analyses the performance of various theoretical hedges over a historical period from October 2001 to March 2007. The results indicate that extrapolation and hedging of the yield curve is able to significantly reduce Value-At-Risk of long term interest rate exposures. A second case study is then performed which analyses performance of the various theoretical hedges using out-of-sample simulated yield curve data. We find that there appears to be a significant benefit to the use of yield curve extrapolation techniques, specifically when used in conjunction with a hedging strategy. In some cases we find that the more simple extrapolation techniques actually increase risk (significantly) when used in conjunction with hedging. However, for some of the more advanced techniques, risk can be significantly reduced. For an entity looking to deal with long term interest rate risk, we find that the choice of extrapolation technique and hedging strategy go hand-in-hand. For this reason the cost of hedging and reduction in risk are strongly correlated. The results we obtain suggest that it is necessary to weigh the benefits against the cost of hedging. Further, this cost seems to increase with increasing reduction in risk. The research and results presented here are related to those in the paper Long Term Forecasting and Hedging of the South African Yield Curve presented by Thomas and Maré at the 2007 Actuarial Convention in South Africa. Copyright / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Mathematics and Applied Mathematics / unrestricted

[pt] Há evidência - Petersen e Rajan (1997) - que fornecedores têm uma vantagem informacional sobre o risco de seus clientes. Entretanto, Elliehausen e Wolken (1993) reportam que taxas de crédito comercial são freqüentemente padronizadas. Por que os fornecedores não usam sua vantagem informacional para adequar taxas de juros a risco? Este trabalho demonstra que se a demanda por insumos for suficientemente inelástica, a competição com os bancos faz com que a taxa de crédito comercial seja invariante e cole na taxa bancária. Se, ao contrário, a demanda for suficientemente elástica, a taxa invariante de crédito comercial é zero, como usualmente acontece nos E.U.A. em créditos de fornecedor até 10 dias. / [en] There is evidence - Petersen and Rajan (1997) - that suppliers have superior information on their clients capacity of repayment. However, Elliehausen and Wolken (1993) report that trade credit rates are frequently standardized. Why do not suppliers use their informational advantage to make the interest rate reflect the risk? This work shows that, if the demand for imputs is sufficiently inelastic, competition among banks leads the trade credit rate to be invariant and very close to banking rate. On the contrary, if the demand is sufficiently elastic, the trade credit rate is invariant and equal to zero, as usually occurs with suppliers credit with maturity until 10 days in USA.