The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has stated that 249,505 credit default swaps (CDS) contracts valued at approximately USD5.7 trillion in gross notional value were entered into its Trade Information Warehouse (Warehouse) by market participants in the global over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market, making the average CDS worth around USD23 million.
According to a statement by the DTCC, the data accumulated by the Warehouse met in part industry commitments made to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and other global regulators to have all CDS contracts registered into a global repository by July 17.
We are pleased to be able to verify and now report on CDS data based on what weve seen from firms initial submission of contracts into our global registry to meet their July 17 deadline, said Stewart Macbeth, DTCC managing director and general manager of the Trade Information Warehouse. There was a small percentage of CDS trades which were not previously held in the Warehouse because of the tailored nature of the contracts. In registering these CDS trade positions, the goal of trying to ensure that risk could be seen from a central vantage point at a central repository has now been achieved for the CDS market.
These contract submissions represent more customized contracts that are not confirmable on an electronic platform such as the automated service provided by DTCC Deriv/SERV. Data registration was received using 30 different currencies from a customer base that spans 35 countries. The submission of these customized trades are for repository and reporting purposes only and do not confer a legal binding agreement in the Warehouse as do electronically confirmed trades that are maintained in the global repository. As of July 24, there were about 2.2 million electronically confirmed contracts with a gross notional value of about USD26.5 trillion registered in the Warehouses repository. These new submission represents less than 10% of the total contracts and 17% of the total gross notional value of contracts registered in the repository.