LIBOR Transition

LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) indexes are an estimate of the cost of borrowing/lending for banks on an unsecured basis. The rates are currently determined each day based on rate submission from panel banks and published by the ICE Benchmark Administrator (IBA). Although reference is often made to the LIBOR interest rate (singular), there are actually 35 different LIBOR interest rates for seven different maturities and for five different currencies.

U.S. Dollar LIBOR (USD LIBOR) is the dominant reference rate for financial instruments, particularly floating rate loans. The size of the contracts indexed to USD LIBOR is estimated to be more than $225 trillion. Many floating rate loans in the rural agriculture and rural infrastructure sectors currently use USD LIBOR as the index for floating rate transactions.

U.S. and international banking regulators have been expressing concern about LIBOR since the financial crisis in 2008. The primary concern is that the lack of a deep and liquid market in unsecured intra-bank transactions has reduced the reliability of LIBOR indexes and stated the market needs to transition to an alternative reference rate for floating rate transactions.

On March 5, 2021, LIBOR’s primary regulatory, the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (UK’s FCA) and the indexes’ administrator, the IBA formally announced that all primary USD LIBOR tenors will either be discontinued or declared non-representative as of June 30, 2023. Under the LIBOR fallback provisions in most loans, the legacy LIBOR loans will continue to be indexed to LIBOR until their first interest reset date after June, 30, 2023. After that date, most loans will transition to an alternative reference rate plus a spread adjustment.

Recently, U.S. banking regulators (including the Farm Credit Administration) issued supervisory guidance encouraging banks to transition away from using USD LIBOR as soon as practicable and in any event by Dec. 31, 2021. The regulators stated the following:

• With respect to new financial contracts entered into before Dec. 31, 2021, the regulators instructed banks/associations to either utilize a reference rate other than USD LIBOR or have robust fallback language in such new contracts that includes a clearly defined alternative reference rate after LIBOR’s discontinuation.
• With respect to new financial contracts entered into after Dec. 31, 2021, the regulators instructed banks/associations that it will consider new instruments indexed to USD LIBOR, as a safety and soundness issue. The statement did include some exemptions for institutions for hedging and meeting obligations under legacy contracts.

On July 29, 2021, the ARRC formally recommended CME Group’s forward looking SOFR Term Rates. This is the final step in determining the ARRC Business Loan Hardwired Fallbacks for 1-, 3-, and 6-Month USD LIBOR will fall back to Term SOFR. Additionally, it is hoped that as the SOFR futures and swap markets develop, the CME will add a 12-Month Term SOFR index prior to the effective date of the USD LIBOR transition. Additional information about the CME Term SOFR indexes is available on the CME website.

Note that the transition to the alternative reference rates for legacy USD LIBOR loans will not be effective until the next repricing of the transaction after June 30, 2023. CoBank will provide an additional notice to members prior to the effective date of the transition.

On March 9, 2021, the ARRC released a statement confirming that under the ARRC’s business loan fallbacks a "Benchmark Transition Event" has occurred and triggered the provision of the ARRC fallbacks based on the March 5, 2021 announcements. CoBank has provided all members with USD LIBOR indexed transactions a notice explaining the Benchmark Event has occurred, but will not be effective until June 30, 2023.

CoBank has been working with current borrowers to ensure appropriate fallback language is included in all loans. The fallback addendums are mostly based on ARRC recommended language to ensure that the transition meets the requirements for accounting and tax LIBOR transition relief.

Additionally, these ARRC statements also confirmed that the date of determination for the USD LIBOR spread adjustments per the International Swap and Derivatives Association (ISDA) LIBOR fallbacks was March 5, 2021. These spread adjustments will be applied to the alternative reference rates on the first rate change after June 30, 2023. The ARRC also stated they intend to utilize the exact same fallback spread adjustment for cash products as the ISDA regardless of the type of SOFR utilized. The fallback SOFR spread adjustments are shown below:

U.S. banking regulators (including the Farm Credit Administration) issued supervisory guidance encouraging banks to transition away from using USD LIBOR as soon as practicable and in any event by Dec. 31, 2021.

With respect to new financial contracts entered into before Dec. 31, 2021, the regulators instructed banks/associations to either utilize a reference rate other than USD LIBOR or have robust fallback language in such new contracts that includes a clearly defined alternative reference rate after LIBOR’s discontinuation.

With respect to new financial contracts entered into after Dec. 31, 2021, the regulators instructed banks/associations that it will consider new instruments indexed to USD LIBOR, as a safety and soundness issue. The statement did include some exemptions for hedging and meeting obligations under legacy contracts.

Please contact your CoBank Relationship Manager to discuss the LIBOR transition of your existing loans and the SOFR-based loan products which CoBank now offers.

As members of several industry-wide committees and regulatory advisory committees, CoBank and other Farm Credit institutions are actively monitoring and participating in discussions with industry groups and financial regulators about the transition of LIBOR as a benchmark for floating rate transactions. CoBank, on behalf of the four Farm Credit Banks, submitted multiple responses to consultations from the ARRC, the CME Group, the Commodities Future Trading Commission and ISDA for their consideration. Additionally, CoBank is working with our members to ensure they understand the implications of the index transition, that the loans are properly documented and alternative reference rate products are available for our members.