This paper describes an analysis of the effects of both foreign exchange (FX) risk and interest rate risk on installments of the housing FX loan using classic comparative statics approach. By focusing on sensitivity of annuity with respect to infinitesimal changes of parameters it presents the impact of the interest rate and FX rate on installments in terms of their shares of the total outstanding in foreign currency, and illustrates using values, in Polish zlotys, for three example loans extended during the period when Poland saw its most intensive FX lending. This analysis represents an attempt to answer a question frequently raised in this country of late: does the issue of debt servicing housing FX loans matter for borrowers and therefore could affect banks’ loan portfolio quality?

The swap spread is defined as the difference between the fixed rate of an interest rate swap and the yield of the treasury with the same maturity. The swap spread is usually interpreted as the effective proxy of bank liquidity and the credit spread indicator. The interpretation is very similar to the LIBOR-OIS spread and in the context of Polish interbank market – WIBOR-OIS. However, WIBOR-OIS is less reliable during the crisis of confidence because of lack of interbank operation with the maturity longer than 1 month. Swap spreads base on two liquid instruments, thus they are free of this defect.

The main goal of this paper is to assess how Polish swap spreads and their conditional variance reacted to important events connected with the subprime crisis and crisis of confidence in the Polish interbank market.