VIDEO | As investor institutions become more active, while markets swing, and regulators set up tighter requirements to cover counterparty positions … the question of which assets can be pledged as margin is increasingly coming into focus. A panel at PostTrade 360° Amsterdam took a user-side look.

The session was sponsored by Eurex.

“The UK experience last year contributed to making us aware that we need to be able to move securities from A to B in a specific time,” said Koen Ottenheijm, Treasury & Trading Development Manager with APG Asset Management (with reference to the crisis in the autumn of 2022, not least in the market for “gilts” after the less-than-successful announcement of the government’s “mini budget”).

On Thursday, he shared the stage with …
Esen Rose, Senior Vice President – Sales & Relationship Management, Eurex Repo, and
Barry Polak, Product Owner OTC Derivatives, ABN Amro Clearing.
The session was titled “Collateral and clearing from the participants’ perspective”.

Watch the session video here!

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Koen Ottenheijm pointed to the relatively narrow eligibility scope for assets, to be used as collateral for trading positions or repo-based borrowing, within the standardised clearing frameworks that regulators are giving market participants incentives to use.

In terms of challenges for market participants through recent years, Barry Polak’s list included also Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the nickel-price explosion:

“There was always a need for cash.”

From the side of Eurex Repo, Esen Rose described plans for new models to lower the threshold for smaller pension funds who want to access the repo markets.

• Our news posts from PostTrade 360° Amsterdam 2023, on 30 November, and previous years, are gathered here. 
• The conference info site, with detailed agenda, is here.
• For post-event access to recorded sessions, find them listed here. To see them, you need to be logged in, and have picked up the free content pass. Sounds tricky but just follow the links! 
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