Globally, credit markets have traditionally been dominated by banks and other financial institutions that lend to large corporations and governments. The landscape began to change significantly in the 1980s with the emergence of the high-yield bond market pioneered by Michael Milken. By the late 1980s, the U.S. high-yield bond market had grown to more than $190 billion in outstanding debt and will continue to expand, reaching $1.7 trillion by 2023.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, the globalization of financial markets accelerated as a result of the development of technology, the liberalization of capital markets, and the proliferation of financial instruments. This period saw the rise of securitization, which allowed the consolidation of various types of debt (such as mortgages and credit card receivables) and the sale of the resulting securities to investors. By 2007, the global market for asset-backed securities (ABS) had grown to more than $2 trillion.