In the last forty years innovations have become a crucial element of international financial markets. It is hard to find an area which, during the last four decades, has not undergone fundamental transformations and modernizations. One of the most important innovations of the second half of the twentieth century is securitisation, which was a practical answer to the changing needs for diversified sources of capital.

According to the present methodology, securitisation is a process during which a usually diversified pool of assets (or part thereof) and the cash flows it generates are removed from a bank's or company's balance sheet for calculating purposes, secured by means of internal or external techniques and legally isolated through the so-called special purpose vehicle (SPV), which then refinances the purchased asset pool by issuing securities on domestic or international financial markets. The ability to anticipate securitisation benefits largely depends on the skill with which the whole operation is conducted. The preparatory stage is of crucial importance here, as it directly influences the prospective effectiveness of securatisation techniques. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that assets constituting the pool regularly generate expected cash flows. In addition, an effective method of isolating assets to be used in the securitisation process from the rest of the balance sheet total is needed. Also the minimum quantity and quality criteria for the pool of securitised assets need to be established.

Securitisation is a form of financing based on assets. Therefore a special attention should be paid to the meaning of the word assets as used in the concept asset securitisation. The concept obviously covers securitisation of bank receivables, which constitutes a very narrow and specific form of this complicated process. Not every kind of receivable can become the object of securitisation. A number of rigid criteria have to be met in order to ensure that the objectives of the originator are not threatened. One such objective is to obtain capital for futher activities or for development. More and more often this objective is being achieved through securitisation of future receivables, which are not yet binding but where there are prerequisites of their becoming legally or economically binding in the future. The use of this kind of asset for securitisation is particularly common in countries lacking fully-developed economies. It results from the fact that the securities issued can achieve better ratings than those of the country of issue.

In developed countries, where capital markets play a very important role, the so-called subparticipation is becoming more and more common. This is a transaction in which the originating bank uses credit derivatives to split the credit risk of a particular pool of assets and to transfer this risk to third parties. In this case the asset pool is not isolated from a bank's balance sheet or books. Subparticipation allows the originator to keep the securitised receivables on the balance sheet. Only the right to a part or all of the benefits arising from the securitised assets is transferred to the SPV.