Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is set to launch a clearing service for all US treasury securities and repurchasing agreements.
Chris Edmonds
The move comes as the exchange seeks to enhance both the transparency and resilience of the US treasury market, leveraging its long-standing experience as a clearing house for credit derivatives.
ICE explained that it believes its offering is “strategically positioned” to take this next step and will promote competition and enable the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) policy objectives around the standardised risk management of the treasury securities market.
“The rich experience we’ve developed creating and operating ICE Clear Credit and the work we’ve done to ensure its compliance with all US and foreign regulatory regimes has created a fertile environment for adding Treasury clearing to our suite of credit clearing services,” asserted Stan Ivanov, president of ICE Clear Credit.
ICE’s new bond clearing business is set to leverage ICE Clear Credit – the exchange’s existing clearing house for credit default swaps (CDS). However, ICE confirmed that the new offering will have a separate rulebook, membership, risk management framework, financial and liquidity resources, and risk committee.
Chris Edmonds, president of ICE’s fixed income and data services, said: “The history of ICE Clear Credit and the way the team at ICE identified a market need that could benefit from modernisation is the core of who we are as a company.
“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.”