A steady improvement in the approach to project risk evaluation by EIB can be seen in the later projects examined, although there seems to be no standard format for this, and it suffers from a split of responsibilities between OPS and PJ. Particular attention was paid to the risks relating to revenues, with a range of scenarios being tested for all projects. However, although projections were usually based on more conservative scenarios than those of the Promoter or Provider, they were sometimes still not conservative enough. On a rail project, which has a combination of high levels of guaranteed availability and heavy penalties for non-performance, there was a particularly detailed analysis of the availability. There was a similarly detailed risk and mitigant analysis by OPS covering both general risks, e.g. performance and payment regimes, and termination, and specific risks such as derailment.
The Bank's approach to credit risk is conservative and quite stringent, reflecting its statute, and is now codified in a set of credit risk guidelines. Where the Bank will be on-risk at some point in the project, a set of guarantee-release criteria are established and approved ex-ante. These are based on a minimum loan-life cover ratio, a minimum project contractual life cover ratio, a minimum annual debt service cover ratio; and a minimum period of operations with an economic performance in line with the base-case projections. Although the guidelines had not been formally put in place at the time the in-depth projects were approved, the same principles had been applied. None of the projects examined show any signs of imprudent lending by the Bank. Indeed it could be argued in some cases that the Bank's financial value-added would have been more substantial if it had been prepared to take the same post-completion project risk as it has on other projects.