This article aims to provide the basics any risk manager should know on the modelling of external events, and this from a past-present-future research perspective. Such events are often also referred to as low-probability events or rare events. The article is organised as follows. Section 2 starts with an overview of the credit risk-specific issues within Quantitative Risk Management and shows where relevant Extreme Value Theory-related questions are being asked. Section 3 presents the one-dimensional theory of extremes, whereas Section 4 is concerned with the multivariate case. Section 5 discusses particular applications and gives an outlook on current research in the field, while Section 6 concludes.