More than 1,100 legal entities have been certified so far on the CICI Utility Web portal launched last month by the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and SWIFT. That adds to the 24,000 entities that had been established prior to the launch of the facility.
The use of CFTC Interim Compliance Identifiers (CICIs) has been mandated by the regulator by firms as legal entity identifiers (LEI) in their reporting of credit and interest rate derivatives (beginning October 12) and for all other OTC derivative asset classes beginning next January.
The registration, structure and maintenance of CICIs follows the same model anticipated to be used in the global LEI system, which is currently awaiting approval by the Financial Stability Board on behalf of the G20 nations. CICIs will become LEIs when the global LEI system is in place.
Given the fact that we began this near the end of August, when many people are on vacation, we were delighted at the strong response we have received so far, and we expect to be registering many more legal entities over the next month before the CTFCs deadline for reporting begins, says William Hodash, managing director for business development at DTCC.
The utility also allows registrants to download the CICI database of identifiers. DTCC and SWIFT say there have been more than 740 full database downloads and more than 420 downloads of the change file database.
We are glad to report that operations started very smoothly and the activity we see on the portal confirms that the firms are busy preparing and implementing the new identifiers in their own operations, says Paul Janssens, LEI program director at SWIFT.
The CFTCs requirement that major swap dealers and participants must obtain a CICI for themselves and for their counterparties means that firms from around the world will need to apply for a CICI. DTCC and SWIFT say the more than 25,000 legal entities that currently have a CICI hail from more than 80 countries.
(CG)