Reverse stress testing via multivariate modeling with vine copulas

Abstract: As an important tool in financial risk management, stress testing aims to evaluate the stability of financial portfolios under some potential large shocks from extreme yet plausible scenarios of risk factors. The effectiveness of a stress test crucially depends on the choice of stress scenarios. In this paper we consider a pragmatic approach to stress scenario estimation that aims to address several practical challenges in the context of real life financial portfolios of currencies from a bank. Our method utilizes a flexible multivariate modelling framework based on vine copulas.