The 3 Cs of Clearing
After the global financial crisis, clearing corporations or Central Counter Parties (CCPs) have become the focal point of systemic risk. I think that globally banks have become stronger as a result of Basel 3, but clearing corporations have become weaker as they have started clearing OTC contracts where there is poor liquidity and price transparency. Competition among CCPs has led to a race to the bottom where the CCP with the worst risk management grabs market share in the newly opened up markets.
Regulators have been slow in addressing the problems of CCP regulation. Much of the discussion has focused on margins and capital, but this is too narrow a view of what a CCP needs to manage defaults without creating systemic risk. This is where I keep coming back to what I call the 3 Cs – cash, capital and (operational) capability.
Cash: A CCP first of all needs cash to meet its settlement obligations to the non defaulting side when it faces a default by a large counter party. Given the rigid times lines of the clearing process, this liquidity is needed at very short notice. In my view, the only credible provider of liquidity in that time frame is the central bank. I have argued for years (probably decades) that a CCP needs discount window access at the central bank, but this solution presumes that the CCP has an abundance of discount window eligible collateral.
Capital: The moment a CCP takes over a defaulted position, it is exposed to market risk on the position until it is able to unwind the position and restore a matched book position. In periods of market stress, orderly liquidation would happen over time frame of several days if not weeks. I recall the long liquidation period involved when LCH unwound the interest rate positions of Lehman after the latter’s bankruptcy or Singapore liquidated the Barings Bank position after the Nick Leson episode. During this period, the CCP needs capital to absorb the market risk and to credibly continue its business as a CCP.
Capability: In my view, many CCPs and their regulators underestimate the importance of operational capability to liquidate positions. It requires access to talented traders with the skill required to trade large positions at times of market stress. It could require access to related markets to lay on proxy hedges; depending on the contract involved, access may be required to index futures, currency futures, foreign derivative markets, spot commodity markets, OTC derivative markets and so on. All this would require pre-existing brokerage relationships and ISDA documentations (in case of OTC derivatives). LCH solves the problem by imposing a legal requirement on its members to provide highly capable traders on secondment to manage a default. During the Lehman default, CME dealt with the problem by conducting an auction of defaulted positions, but this may not always be possible. In my experience, many large CCPs have not even conducted mock drills of managing very large defaults. They tend to believe that their success in managing small defaults proves their operational readiness. I think this is a mistake.
It is my belief that regulators have not taken an integrated view of the 3 Cs and have focused excessively on margins and CCP resolution as the solution. The problem with this approach is that it creates the risk that the CCP would take steps that create massive systemic risk in its efforts to protect itself. A CCP with inadequate cash, capital or capability gets so scared of a potential default that it takes recourse to pre-emptive margin calls or market distorting regulatory measures to ward off a threat to its own solvency. At a time of market stress, these actions are destabilizing and can become a source of systemic risk.
Posted at 1:35 pm IST on Mon, 27 Jun 2016 permanent link
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