The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. is planning early next year to complete its search for a credit derivatives trade settlement agent and to finalize the back loading of existing over-the-counter contracts to an automated platform. DTCC launched a trade information warehouse Tuesday for post-trade processing of transactions that are matched and confirmed through DTCC's Deriv/SERV platform. All the major global dealers and 655 buy-side firms use the platform and warehouse, which process 80% of trades in the USD26 trillion credit derivative market.
Stu Goldstein, DTCC spokesman, said the next steps are to link the warehouse to a central electronic payment and settlement agent, which it hopes to choose by the end of the first quarter, and to load older trades to the platform, which it hopes to complete by mid-year. Longer-term plans are to expand the system to cover other over-the-counter products, such as foreign exchange, interest rate and equity derivatives, but timetables for these have not been set.
