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Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) saw a modest year-over-year uptick in new securities lending transactions last month while also recording a record-breaking annual total of US exchange-listed options.
The Chicago-based equity derivatives central counterparty’s (CCP) data for last month shows the number of new loans increased 7.7 percent from September 2019 with 110,808 transactions.
Last month’s average daily loan value, meanwhile, chalked-up a 3.6 percent decrease compared to September 2019.
Elsewhere, OCC surpassed the annual volume record for the US exchange-listed options industry in September when it recorded 671 million contracts, bringing its year-to-date total of contracts exchanged to a record-breaking 5.45 billion.
The previous record was 5.24 billion cleared contracts in 2018.
OCC says its September cleared volume is now the second-highest month ever, and up 65.7 percent from September 2019.
Year-to-date average daily cleared contract volume through September is 28.8 million contracts, up 46.2 percent from the same month last year.
OCC’s COO Scot Warren says: “Thanks to our colleagues, of whom over 98 percent are working remotely, and the investments OCC has made to enhance our operational and financial resilience, we are delivering the results that market participants expect of OCC in its role as a Systemically Important Financial Market Utility.
“This is especially evident with record cleared volumes this year, including nine of the US options industry’s top 10 volume days.”
