Transitioning away from the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and other IBORs is one of the biggest challenges currently facing banks and other financial services firms. The significance of this can hardly be underestimated, as LIBOR alone is a benchmark rate which underpins around $400 trillion of financial products for customers globally, including derivatives, bonds and loans.

Regulators have made clear that financial institutions need to end their reliance on LIBOR by end-2021. Successful management of the transition will require significant change and strategic risk management, including identifying existing exposure to LIBOR, the analysis of huge numbers of historical customer and counterparty contracts, adjusting risk profiles and models, adapting IT systems, updating documentation and keeping pace with a challenging set of regulatory milestones. It has been speculated that for some firms this could be a bigger challenge than Brexit.

While managing legacy exposure will be a significant challenge in its own right, financial institutions were required from Q4 of this year to include alternative rate products in their product offerings, such as SONIA in the sterling market. Any new LIBOR-linked product now needs to allow for switching to an alternative rate before the end of next year. Ensuring that the conversion mechanism in these contracts works for customers and counterparties is critical.

Join us at Managing LIBOR Transition: Practical Guidance for UK Financial Institutions and Users - A Virtual Summit, on 26th January to hear from the FCA and leading UK practitioners involved in the implementation of the transition. This is the first of three summits that we will be organising in the run up to the final implementation date.

We are delighted that Edwin Schooling Latter, Director of Markets and Wholesale Policy at the FCA will be giving the keynote address.

Key issues addressed by our exceptional speaker panel include:

• Updates on transition process and the work of the Sterling Risk-Free Reference Rates Working Group
• The ISDA Fallback Protocol for the derivatives market
• Differences, timeframes and possible delays in the migration of financial institutions towards IBOR transition
• The regulatory practicalities to achieve global compliance How to mitigate conduct and risk during the transition
• Developments in SONIA, SOFR and €STR: the new rates going forward
• Transition from LIBOR to RFR-linked issuance: the issuer’s perspective
• Improving SONIA issuance in the loan market
• Operational challenges of the transition: efficiently managing systems and legacy
• Understanding the remaining legal and contractual challenges associated with LIBOR
• The role of technology in the IBOR transition
• The current and future ramifications of IBOR transition and the anticipated challenges in 2021