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Exploring the GMSLA challenge

Securities lending is a well-established activity in financial markets, vital both to the provision of liquidity and as a means to enhance returns for lenders. According to the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s (FSOC) 2020 annual report, the estimated value of Securities on loan globally was $2.5 trillion as of the end of September 2020.

The International Securities Lending Association (ISLA) publishes and maintains the 2010 Global Master Securities lending Agreement (GMSLA), the market standard English law stock lending master agreement.  

In our experience the GMSLA can be something of a poor relation amongst master agreements – it isn’t as widely used as, for example, ISDAs and GMRAs and, as a result, fewer lawyers and negotiators in the market tend to be very familiar with its terms.

Our GMSLA expertise

DRS has long-standing expertise in all aspects of the GMSLA – its specialist teams act for a number of major financial institutions, from initial playbook-building, through document negotiation to final legal data upload.

Our clients trust us to manage their day-to-day contract requirements in accordance with their policies and processes. We reduce costs and our clients are left free to direct resource to other priorities. To provide cost certainty, we can deliver our service for a fixed price per agreement. In addition, our document management service is completely flexible, meaning we can scale up or down rapidly if your requirements change.

We can support you with minimal lead time and little upfront effort on your part as the challenge is completely familiar to us; it’s what we do. You can rely on us to be proactive and adapt to the unexpected. Our combined capability delivered from our centres in London and Newcastle allows us to deliver material cost savings without compromising quality or responsiveness.

The latest news

Our blog covers many topics – check out some of our latest posts.

Your GMSLA negotiation guide – everything you need to know…

Drawing on our expertise, we’ve created an in-depth guide to the most vital clauses of the GMRA, with commentary and guides to help you understand every clause of the document.

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