Credit enhancements come in two varieties: counterparty based, where the exercise of the credit enhancement requires a third party to pay, and this includes guarantees and CDS contracts. Asset based credit enhancements are based upon a physical asset in possession, and these include collateral and balances owed on other trades or transactions, and availed through close out netting arrangements.

Of the listed choices, I and III are asset based credit enhancements, and II is third party based. Cash reserves are not credit enhancements (unless held as collateral).

Choice 'c' is the correct answer. The Markov property is the assumption that there is no ratings momentum, and that transition probabilities are dependent only upon where the rating currently is and where it is going to. Where it has come from, or what the past changes in ratings have been, have no effect on the transition probabilities. ('Herstatt risk' refers to settlement risk, and is irrelevant.)

Delta is non-linear with respect to prices for a number of securities such as bonds, options and other derivatives. It changes with changes in prices, and any hedge initially undertaken becomes quickly mismatched. Therefore delta hedges need to be managed quite actively and kept up-to-date. Therefore I is true.Primary risks comprise most of the risk in a position, and therefore portfolio managers are right to focus on them over secondary risks. Therefore II is true.The greater the hedge rebalance frequency, the lower is the hedge mismatch at any point in time, and therefore residual risks would be lower. However, rebalancing hedges requires rebalance trades to be done, and these involve transaction costs. Generally, a reasonable balance needs to be struck between the frequency of rebalances (a lower frequency increases residual risk, but this residual risk is not directionally biased) and the costs of rebalancing. III is correct.Vega risk is the risk arising due to changes in prices due to changes in volatility.  Options carry vega risk. Therefore any hedges against vega risks can only be obtained using other options positions.  (Vega risk may also be hedged using other volatility based products, eg an OTC volatility swap, or a VIX futures type product.)

Choice 'a' (The amplification of smaller initial shocks to one risk factor creating larger subsequent shocks through system-wide interactions between other risks, creating self-perpetuating downward stresses in the markets) is the most comprehensive description of 'feedback effects', as described in the BCBS document on stress testing. Choice 'c' is one manifestation of feedback effects, but does not describe the entire effect. Choice 'b' is not a description of 'feedback effects', but one of the various weaknesses in stress testing that was seen during the crisis. Choice 'd' is plain nonsensical.

The BCBS paper provides a good and succinct description of feedback effect: how mortgage default shocks led to a deterioration of market prices of CDOs, followed by a drying up of the liquidity in these markets. This led to banks having to hold on to assets they intended to securitize (securitization and warehousing risk), and given the absence of transparency on who was exposed to what, banks refusing to lend to each other and a drying up of the wholesale funding market as well. All of this was additionally accompanied by a general flight to quality, households withdrawing money from money market funds creating a crisis in that market as well. At each stage, the initial shock was amplified and fed back into the system through interactions that had not been imagined by any market participant or regulator, leave alone risk managers.

The distance to default is the number of standard deviations that expected asset values are away from the default point. The expression in Choice 'd' represents distance to default. Choice 'd' is the correct answer. The other choices are incorrect.

The correct definition of CVA is LGD * EPE * PD. All other answers are incorrect.

CVA reflects the adjustment for counterparty default on derivative and other trading book transactions. This reflects the credit charge, that neeeds to be reduced from the expected value of the transaction to determine its true value. It is calculated as a product of the loss given default, the probability of default and the average weighted exposure of future EPEs across the time horizon for the transaction.

The future exposures need to be discounted to the present, and occasionally the equations for CVA will state that explicitly. Similarly, in some more advanced dynamic models the correlation between EPE and PD is also accounted for. The conceptual ideal though remains the same: CVA=LGD*EPE*PD.

The recovery rate, the default hazard rate (also called the average default intensity) and the spread on debt are linked by the equation Hazard Rate = Spread/(1 - Recovery Rate). Therefore, the recovery rate implicit in the given data is = 1 - 8%/10% = 20%.