After a major default, investor attention usually turns to the potential payout from credit default swaps, a type of security that acts as insurance against bankruptcy. But when one of China’s biggest property developers missed a coupon on its bonds late last month, few bothered to check whether there would be any money up for grabs.

That’s because China’s CDS market is much less developed than in most major economies, meaning that many of the investors that bought Country Garden Holdings Ltd’s $10 billion of dollar bonds did so without hedging against default. The outstanding volume of swaps is so minuscule that the panel of dealers and investors which oversees the global CDS market ruled this week that it isn’t worth holding an auction to determine the size of a payout. Contracts will be settled bilaterally between buyers and sellers instead.