LCH.Clearnet Limited (LCH.Clearnet), the multi-national clearing house, today announced it has cleared over $22 trillion notional of interest rate derivatives through its SwapClear service for buy-side clients. Activity has intensified in the run up to the Dodd-Frank mandatory clearing deadline, which comes into effect on March 11.
February was a record month with 73 buy-side clients clearing 7,650 trades in 15 different currencies across a broad product set which includes forward rate agreements, amortizers and overnight index swaps, leveraging the benefits of SwapClear’s portfolio margining risk management approach and the resulting margin efficiency. SwapClear clears for an increasingly broad array of client types in the US and 17 other jurisdictions including asset managers, hedge funds and regional banks.
"We are pleased with the surge in buy-side activity, but more specifically we are encouraged by the volume of trades, as this is the real indication of the market’s readiness for central clearing,” said Daniel Maguire, Head of SwapClear in the US.
SwapClear, which already clears over 95% of the world’s cleared interest rate swaps, has invested heavily in the last three years so its risk, operations and technology architecture can accommodate the influx of buy-side activity and their clearing needs. In 2013 to date, an average of $2 trillion notional and 9,200 trades have been cleared daily on SwapClear by market participants.
SwapClear has over 14 years’ experience of clearing for the global IRS market. Today it clears the most comprehensive product range for buy-side clients and dealers and the total notional value of trades currently outstanding in SwapClear is more than $370 trillion, with an additional $174 trillion eliminated through multilateral trade compression.
In addition, SwapClear’s direct clearing membership, which now stands at 74, offers clients an unrivalled choice of executing brokers from across the globe in 17 currencies.
Background:
Only the client side of each trade is included in the Client Clearing Volumes - i.e. the numbers do not double count the dealer side of the trades.
