Risk Management Lessons from 'Knock-in Knock-out' Option Disaster

Abstract

Currency knock-in knock-out (KIKO) options had been widely used for hedging exchange rate risks in Korean financial markets. However, as the Korean won moved in an unexpected direction during the global financial crisis period of 2007 and 2008, the hedging instruments incurred huge losses to the option holders. In this paper, we analyze the event from the viewpoint of risk assessment and management. We find that, first, if the option holders had assessed the risk levels with and without the KIKO options by using standard risk measures like value-at-risk or conditional value-at-risk, then many KIKO option contracts would not have been justifiable from the beginning. Second, having a proper view on the exchange rate dynamics turned out to be crucial for risk assessment and management. If the companies had a proper view instead of a myopic view on the exchange rate movement, then the KIKO options might not have been chosen. Finally, 'hedge-and-forget' behavior proved to be very costly and reckless. if the companies had continuously assessed and managed their risks, then the losses from the KIKO options could have been significantly mitigated. Some relevant pricing issues are also investigated. We find that most KIKO option contracts under Study might not be significantly overpriced. However, potential impacts of the possible mispricing could be considerable in some cases. Nonetheless, the risk management failure proved to be more important for the KIKO option losses than the possible mispricing problem.