The industry’s call for a delay in the margin rules, expected to apply from 1 December 2015, may finally receive a positive response from the regulators[1]. These rules on risk-management of uncleared derivatives will impose collection of Initial Margin (IM) and Variation Margin (VM). The global phase-in timeline was set by the Basel Committee on […]

The FSB and BCBS have released the 2014 update of global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) as well as their respective positions in the bucketed list of additional loss absorbency add-on requirements. The BCBS has also separately published the annually updated list of the denominators used to calculate the banks’ scores and the corresponding bucket allocation […]

The five leading US regulatory agencies, collectively referred to as the “prudential regulators”[1], met yesterday to finalise the US iteration of the Basel III Liquidity Coverage Ratio, to adopt a supplementary leverage ratio rule and to propose new margin requirements for uncleared swaps. Liquidity Coverage Ratio– a deleveraging rule to protect financial institutions from temporary […]

On 18 July 2014, the EBA published a Consultation Paper on the Guidelines to assess other systemically important institutions (O-SIIs).  O-SIIs represent the EU implementation of the BCBS’ domestic systemically important banks (D-SIBs). Contrary to G-SIBs, the D-SIBs classification allows for considerable discretion by national authorities. Accordingly, a basket of optional indicators is available in […]

ISDA is in the final stages of preparing its ISDA 2014 Collateral Agreement Negative Interest Protocol (the “Protocol”) for publication.  ISDA currently expects the Protocol to be open for adherence sometime during the week commencing 17 February 2014. The Protocol allows adhering parties to amend credit support documentation to account for negative interest amounts on […]

Risk Magazine is reporting that the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s (BCBS) final “Basel III leverage ratio framework and disclosure requirements”, published on 12 January 2014 may force the restructuring of existing portfolios of credit support annexes (CSA) and looks set to deal a serious blow to the viability of ISDA’s standard credit support annex […]

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision will meet this Sunday, the 12th January.  They are close to a final decision on their June 2013 draft proposals to exclude all collateral from leverage ratio calculations and ban netting for repo agreements, irrespective of national rules. The decision is material- according to its 2012 Annual Report, JP […]

Risk Magazine is reporting that certain unnamed US and European regulators are hinting that the additional 8% haircut levied on collateral denominated in a different currency to that of the underlying, to be introduced pursuant to the Working Group on Margining Requirement’s (WGMR) “Margin requirements for non-centrally cleared derivatives”, may be applied only to initial […]

Introduction On 2 September 2013, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (“BCBS”) and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (“IOSCO”) published their long-awaited final policy document dealing with “Margin requirements for non-centrally cleared derivatives”. Scope Subject to certain exemptions discussed below, the final rules apply to financial firms and systemically important non-financial entities (“Covered Entities”) […]