Recent pricing dislocations in U.S. fixed-income markets have illustrated there is more to hedging a liability’s interest rate risk than simply matching its duration. Basis risk – in the context of liability hedging – is the risk that the changes in the market value of assets, designated as a hedge, will deviate from the changes in the value of the appropriate liability benchmark.
This paper provides Watson Wyatt’s perspective on how to address this aspect of managing a liability’s interest rate (and inflation1) risk.
