Derivative credit instruments belong to the most significant innovations seen by the financial system in recent years. Their introduction has made it possible to trade in credit risk in isolation from other types of risk. Rapidly rising volumes of trading in derivative credit instruments - combined with the variety of their forms and hence of applications - attracts considerable interest from both researchers and economic agents. So far, those instruments have been used chiefly by banks, but they can equally well serve risk management purposes in other financial institutions or larger non-financial organizations. The paper, presenting the review of basic issues of derivative credit instruments, covers a vast ground and has therefore been divided in two parts. The current issue of "Bank i Kredyt" presents only the first part; the second one will be published in the April issue. In the first chapter, the author presents derivative credit instruments as part of a broader development in risk management methods. This primarily involves a shift in emphasis from managing the risk of individual assets to managing the risk of the entire portfolio. Moreover, it results in increasing use of external, publicly available information as well as commercial products designed to measure credit risk. In the subsequent chapters, the author seeks to define derivative credit instrument by critically reviewing the definitions encountered in the literature of the field. He also presents the construction and operation of the basic types of derivative credit instruments: credit default swaps, total return swaps, credit spread options as well as credit-linked notes.