Asset and liability management (often abbreviated ALM) is the practice of managing financial risks that arise due to mismatches between the assets and liabilities as part of an investment strategy in financial accounting.
ALM sits between risk management and strategic planning. It is focused on a long-term perspective rather than mitigating immediate risks and is a process of maximizing assets to meet complex liabilities that may increase profitability.
ALM includes the allocation and management of assets, equity, interest rate and credit risk management including risk overlays, and the calibration of company-wide tools within these risk frameworks for optimization and management in the local regulatory and capital environment. Often an ALM approach passively matches assets against liabilities (fully hedged) and leaves surplus to be actively managed.
ALM objectives and scope
The exact roles and perimeter around ALM can vary significantly from one bank (or other financial institutions) to another depending on the business model adopted and can encompass a broad area of risks.
The traditional ALM programs focus on interest rate risk and liquidity risk because they represent the most prominent risks affecting the organization balance-sheet (as they require coordination between assets and liabilities).
But ALM also now seeks to broaden assignments such as foreign exchange risk and capital management. According to the Balance sheet management benchmark survey conducted in 2009 by the audit and consulting company PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), 51% of the 43 leading financial institutions participants look at capital management in their ALM unit.
The scope of the ALM function to a larger extent covers the following processes:
Liquidity risk: the current and prospective risk arising when the bank is unable to meet its obligations as they come due without adversely affecting the bank’s financial conditions. From an ALM perspective, the focus is on the funding liquidity risk of the bank, meaning its ability to meet its current and future cash-flow obligations and collateral needs, both expected and unexpected. This mission thus includes the bank liquidity’s benchmark price in the market.
Interest rate risk: The risk of losses resulting from movements in interest rates and their impact on future cash-flows. Generally because a bank may have a disproportionate amount of fixed or variable rates instruments on either side of the balance-sheet. One of the primary causes are mismatches in terms of bank deposits and loans.
Capital markets risk: The risk from movements in equity and/or credit on the balance sheet. An insurer may wish to harvest either risk or fee premia. Risk is then mitigated by options, futures, derivative overlays which may incorporate tactical or strategic views.
Currency risk management: The risk of losses resulting from movements in exchanges rates. To the extent that cash-flow assets and liabilities are denominated in different currencies.
Funding and capital management: As all the mechanism to ensure the maintenance of adequate capital on a continuous basis. It is a dynamic and ongoing process considering both short- and longer-term capital needs and is coordinated with a bank’s overall strategy and planning cycles (usually a prospective time-horizon of 2 years).
Profit planning and growth.
In addition, ALM deals with aspects related to credit risk as this function is also to manage the impact of the entire credit portfolio (including cash, investments, and loans) on the balance sheet. The credit risk, specifically in the loan portfolio, is handled by a separate risk management function and represents one of the main data contributors to the ALM team.
The ALM function scope covers both a prudential component (management of all possible risks and rules and regulation) and an optimization role (management of funding costs, generating results on balance sheet position), within the limits of compliance (implementation and monitoring with internal rules and regulatory set of rules). ALM intervenes in these issues of current business activities but is also consulted to organic development and external acquisition to analyze and validate the funding terms options, conditions of the projects and any risks (i.e., funding issues in local currencies).
Today, ALM techniques and processes have been extended and adopted by corporations other than financial institutions; e.g., insurance.
