Global clearing house LCH.Clearnet Ltd today announced that its SwapClear service has reached an important milestone this year, by eliminating more than $100 trillion in notional since January 1, 2015.
This achievement has been driven mainly by an acceleration of compression activity by SwapClear’s members and their clients throughout 2015. Amidst record volumes of cleared trades this year, SwapClear has compressed $323 trillion since January 1st, reducing the notional outstanding from nearly $362 trillion at the start of 2015 to $254 trillion. This was achieved through its proprietary compression services, such as blended-rate, and those offered in partnership with TriOptima.
SwapClear’s members are currently able to compress interest rate swaps (IRS), forward rate agreements (FRA) and overnight index swaps (OIS) using the service. There are plans to launch compression services for inflation swaps and FX non-deliverable forwards (NDF) in 2016.
Cameron Goh, Head of Clearing Solutions, SwapClear and Listed Rates, LCH.Clearnet, said:
“Eliminating over $100 trillion in net notional in a calendar year is an important milestone in our efforts to increase efficiency for the market. With the European mandate for clearing IRS fast approaching, we’ve seen a marked increase in cleared volumes at SwapClear.
“As the capital requirements under Basel III begin to bite, banks and clearing brokers are continually looking at ways to reduce exposures and drive down their clients’ and their own notional outstanding. At the same time, buy-side firms are keen to make operational savings by managing their books as efficiently as possible. Compression enables our members and their clients to do just that by offsetting compatible trades, allowing them to achieve significant capital and operational efficiencies. We expect to see growing momentum for use of these services as we extend the offering to other products in 2016.”
You can view the official announcement from LCH.Clearnet by clicking here.