Intercontinental Exchange Inc. said Monday it will launch a clearing service for all U.S. Treasury securities and repurchasing agreements.
The clearing service will leverage ICE’s global clearing house for credit default swaps (CDS), ICE Clear Credit, which was founded during the financial crisis in 2009 to bring stability to the CDS market.
The global technology and data provider’s announcement follows rule changes adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to enhance risk management practices for central counterparties in the Treasury market and facilitate additional clearing of Treasury securities transactions to enhance resilience in the market.
“Over the last fifteen years, ICE Clear Credit has become the leading global clearing house for credit derivatives, and we believe it is strategically positioned to offer Treasury clearing services that will promote competition and help facilitate the SEC’s policy objective of bringing increased transparency and standardized risk management to the Treasury securities market,” said Stan Ivanov, President of ICE Clear Credit.
ICE, which operates many of the largest clearing houses globally, said the Treasury clearing service will be established as a separate offering from the current CDS clearing service, and will have a separate rulebook, membership, risk management framework, financial and liquidity resources, and risk committee.
“As we look to add Treasury clearing to the breadth of services we offer for fixed income markets, we will leverage the successful playbook we developed in the past to offer an industry-trusted clearing solution along with the front-, middle- and back-office workflows our customers rely on to manage their daily business operations,” said Chris Edmonds, President of ICE’s Fixed Income and Data Services.