Credit Derivatives: Analyze, Price & Apply

About this course

Credit derivatives play a critical role in managing credit risk, pricing default exposure, and supporting risk transfer in modern financial markets. In this course, you will build a strong foundation in structured finance and credit derivatives while learning how key instruments are designed, priced, and applied in practice. You will begin by exploring the fundamentals of structured finance, credit risk, and credit default swaps (CDS), including pricing concepts, probability models, and credit event triggers. As you progress, you will examine advanced credit derivative instruments such as credit-linked notes, asset swaps, total return swaps, basket default swaps, and bond-CDS equivalence, while interpreting joint default probabilities to understand systemic risk. The course concludes with practical pricing methods, recovery rates, computational approaches, and the analysis of credit spreads and derivative valuation in real-world financial markets. Designed for finance students, risk managers, and investment professionals, this course combines foundational concepts with practical applications to help you analyze, price, and apply credit derivatives with confidence. By the end of the course, you will be able to evaluate credit risk, assess default exposures using pricing and probability models, differentiate among major credit derivative instruments, and apply computational methods to support informed financial risk management and portfolio decisions.