Global clearing house LCH has reported a record year for nominal cleared in 2019 through its RepoClear platform, with a 7 percent year-over-year growth compared to the year before.
LCH saw €212 trillion nominal cleared by members throughout the year, which the clearinghouse says enabled them to benefit from the netting efficiencies of the EU’s Target2-Securities platform.
SwapClear, LCH’s interest rate derivatives clearing service, registered over $1,229 trillion in notional for 2019, an increase of 14 percent from 2018’s volumes.
Compression volumes also continued to grow, with more than $920 trillion compressed over the course of the year, up 19 percent from 2018.
During the year, LCH was also the first central counterparty to launch clearing for Euro Short-Term Rate (€STR) swaps and expanded its non-deliverable swaps offering to cover five additional currencies.
LCH cleared its first euro interest rate swaps
referencing €STR in October, with Morgan Stanley and LBBW, the parent company of three commercial banks, among the first participants to clear derivatives using the new rate.
In December, RepoClear also cleared its its first Variable Rate Repo trade indexed on the Euro Short-Term Rate (€STR), with Credit Suisse among the first participants to clear the new rate at LCH.
Daniel Maguire, CEO of LCH, and group director, post trade for the London Stock Exchange Group, says: “2019 has been another successful year for LCH with record levels of activity across many of our services.
“We’ve continued to collaborate with the market to launch efficient and resilient solutions to support our customers’ risk management and capital efficiency.”
Maguire went on to explain that LCH, and the LSEG post trade division as a whole is looking for more partnership and areas to innovate and enable compliance with regulatory reforms, including the migration to alternative reference rates.
