07 August 2015

IOSCO publishes Report on Post-Trade Transparency in the Credit Default Swaps Market

IOSCO concludes that greater post-trade transparency in the CDS market—including making the price and volume of individual transactions publicly available—would be valuable to market participants and other market observers.

The International Organization of Securities Commissions published the final report Post-Trade Transparency in the Credit Default Swaps Market, which analyzes the potential impact of mandatory post-trade transparency in one particular over-the-counter derivatives market: the credit default swaps (CDS) market.  IOSCO encourages each member jurisdiction to take steps toward enhancing post-trade transparency in its CDS market.

The report’s analysis is based upon a review of relevant works of international bodies and academic literature and an examination of publicly available transaction-level post-trade data about CDS transactions before and after the introduction of mandatory post-trade transparency in certain CDS markets in the United States. On the basis of this analysis, IOSCO concludes that the data does not suggest that this introduction of mandatory post-trade transparency had a substantial effect on market risk exposure or market activity for those products. IOSCO also conducted a survey of market participants and other market observers regarding their use of certain publicly available post-trade data and its perceived impact on the market and considered comments received on a consultation version of the report.

The term post-trade transparency in this report refers to a regulatory system that mandates disclosure of information, widely accessible to the public, about the price and volume of each relevant transaction. The term does not refer to regulatory structures that allow for voluntary or selective disclosure of data. Because post-trade transparency requires public dissemination of information about the price and volume of individual transactions, the term also does not apply to regulatory structures that require dissemination of data (however widely) only in an aggregate form. Because the information is for the benefit of market participants and the public generally, post-trade transparency does not entail disclosure of counterparty identity.

IOSCO anticipates that additional data from jurisdictions with mandatory post-trade transparency will enable further studies of the impact of post-trade transparency in the CDS market and other OTC derivatives markets.

CDS are contracts that transfer the credit risk of a reference entity or instrument from a buyer of credit protection to a seller of credit protection. The Bank for International Settlements estimates that $16 trillion in notional amounts were outstanding in the CDS market at end-2014. IOSCO believes that improving transparency in the CDS market will increase the efficacy of the G20 commitments to reform the over-the-counter derivatives markets.

Full report

Press release

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