Central Counterparties Addressing Their Too Important To Fail Nature

Central counterparties (CCPs) can offer significant benefits to a market. However, CCPs are also highly interconnected with financial institutions and markets and therefore too important to fail. The increased volumes cleared through CCPs and their increasing global scope, in particular in the OTC derivatives market, make it even more important that systemic risks related to CCPs are managed. This paper argues that the current set of international policy measures does partly address these risks, but that alternative policy measures are needed to reduce remaining systemic risks. For example, the paper recommends network analysis to be conducted by CCPs and authorities to gauge potential losses and suggests a common international approach to central bank services to help reduce the dependency of CCPs on services provided by commercial banks.

Recovery and resolution regimes are being developed for central counterparties (CCPs). We analyse current resolution tools in the context of policy, which is to restore the critical functions of a failed CCP. We conclude that the toolkit is insufficient to avoid the costs of resolution being borne by taxpayers, and propose alternative policy suggestions for addressing the problem of a failed CCP.

The global financial crisis (GFC) has renewed interest in emergency liquidity support (sometimes referred to as “Lender of Last Resort”) provided by central banks to financial institutions and challenged the traditional way of conducting these operations. Despite a vast literature on the topic, central bank approaches and practices vary considerably. In this paper we focus on, for the most part, the provision of idiosyncratic support, approaching it from an operational perspective; highlighting different approaches adopted by central banks; and also identifying some of the issues that arose during the GFC.

To mitigate systemic risk, some regulators have advocated the greater use of centralized counterparties (CCPs) to clear Over-The-Counter (OTC) derivatives trades. Regulators should be cognizant that large banks active in the OTC derivatives market do not hold collateral against all the positions in their trading book and the paper proves an estimate of this under-collateralization. Whatever collateral is held by banks is allowed to be rehypothecated (or re-used) to others. Since CCPs would require all positions to have collateral against them, off-loading a significant portion of OTC derivatives transactions to central counterparties (CCPs) would require large increases in posted collateral, possibly requiring large banks to raise more capital. These costs suggest that most large banks will be reluctant to offload their positions to CCPs, and the paper proposes an appropriate capital levy on remaining positions to encourage the transition.

The U.S., the U.K., and more recently, the E.U., have proposed policy measures directly targeting complexity and business structures of banks. Unlike other, price-based reforms (e.g., Basel 3 and G-SIFI surcharges), these proposals have been developed unilaterally with material differences in scope, design and implementation schedules. This may exacerbate cross-border regulatory arbitrage and put a further burden on consolidated supervision and cross-border resolution. This paper provides an analysis of the potential implications of implementing different structural policy measures. It proposes a pragmatic and coordinated approach to development of these policies to reduce risk of regulatory arbitrage and minimize unintended consequences. In doing so, it also aims to identify a set of common policy measures that countries could adopt to re-scope bank business models and corporate structures.

The over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market has captured the attention of regulators after the Global Financial Crisis due to the risk it poses to financial stability. Under the post-crisis regulatory reform the concentration of business, and risks, among a few major players is changed by the concentration of a large portion of transactions in the new market infrastructures, the Central Counterparties (CCPs). This book, for the first time, analyses the regulatory response of the United Kingdom and the United States, the two largest centres of OTC derivatives transactions, and highlights their shortcomings. The book uses a normative risk-based approach to regulation as a methodological lens to analyse the UK regime of CCPs in the OTC derivatives market. It specifically focuses on prudential supervision and conduct of business rules governing OTC derivatives transactions and the move towards enhancing the use of central clearing. The resulting analysis, from a normative risk based approach, suggests that the UK regime for CCPs does not fulfil what would be expected if a coherent risk based approach was taken. Our comments on the Dodd-Frank Act highlight that the incoherent adoption of risk-based approach to regulation affects the effectiveness of the US regime for CCPs. Such a regime does not follow the pace of events of ‘innovation risk’; in particular, the foreseeable changes FinTech will bring to the OTCDM and central clearing services. The second inadequacy of the US regime concerns the dual regulatory structure of the CFTC and the SEC, and the inadequate adoption of different and not well-coordinated regulatory strategies. We also analyse the cross-border implications of the US regime for non-US CCPs that provide clearing services to US market participants. Finally, we study the negative effects of the absence of a clearly defined resolution regime for CCPs.

We identify current challenges for creating stable, yet efficient financial systems using lessons from recent and past crises. Reforms need to start from three tenets: adopting a system-wide perspective explicitly aimed at addressing market failures; understanding and incorporating into regulations agents’ incentives so as to align them better with societies’ goals; and acknowledging that risks of crises will always remain, in part due to (unknown) unknowns – be they tipping points, fault lines, or spillovers. Corresponding to these three tenets, specific areas for further reforms are identified. Policy makers need to resist, however, fine-tuning regulations: a “do not harm” approach is often preferable. And as risks will remain, crisis management needs to be made an integral part of system design, not relegated to improvisation after the fact.