Our funding activities

SEK’s mission means that we always, even in financially difficult times, shall be able to provide our customers with credits. This requires an extensive and reliable funding activity. SEK should also have a liquidity buffer, that not only should withstand harsh borrowing conditions, but also cover the sometimes very large outstanding tenders that SEK backs for Swedish exports. SEK has no refinancing risk, and all credits are fully funded until maturity.

SEK’s borrowing consists of large global benchmark transactions, public bond issues, and private placements.

• Global benchmark transactions  are sold through a bank syndication in an open market to investors around the world.
  
  
• By contrast, public bond issues target specific markets, such as institutional or private individuals in one or several countries.
  
  
• Private placements are tailor-made transactions aimed at one or a limited number of investors. Private placements can be plain vanilla or structured according to investor need.

SEK is the only Swedish entity that so far has issued bonds in the global benchmark market. SEK’s transactions have been well received from investors around the world and SEK is a well-known issuer in both the Japanese and the US retail market.

SEK is an experienced issuer of structured bonds, being active in this area almost twenty years. The performance  of structured bonds is linked to the value of an underlying asset, such as equity, commodities, currencies or interest rates. SEK also issues credit linked notes, where the amount that the investor receives depends on the ability of a third party to honor its payments. The products deviate from the normal SEK bond issue since the investor takes a third party risk, such as a company or a state.

For information about funding in emerging markets, please refer to
Emerging Markets

In 2010 SEK borrowed USD 11 billion in long term funding.