The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has introduced new clearing regulations projected to boost daily treasury clearing activity at the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) by over US$4 trillion. This projection comes from a DTCC survey of 83 sell-side institutions.
DTCC’s Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC) is expected to see this increase due to new mandates for central clearing. Earlier estimates had placed the increase at US$1.63 trillion.
“With the SEC’s final rules on mandatory central clearing, it’s unsurprising that the industry’s estimates are now around $4 trillion daily,” says Brian Steele, DTCC’s managing director and president of clearing and securities services. He noted that DTCC currently processes about US$7 trillion in daily treasury activity, with the buy-side “sponsored service” experiencing a 70 per cent year-on-year growth.
Steele expects these growth trends to continue as the expanded Treasury Clearing requirement is implemented. DTCC also highlighted “done-away activity,” where a client executes a trade with one counterparty but clears it with another, as a key focus under the new rules.
March 2025
The survey indicated that around one-third of sell-side institutions plan to offer US treasury clearing through their prime brokerage, agency clearing, or futures commission merchant (FCM) business lines.
The SEC’s rules, announced in December, aim to improve risk management and promote extensive clearing of securities transactions in the treasury market. The rules mandate covered clearing agencies to ensure members clear specified secondary market transactions and separate house and customer margin. These changes are set to be completed by March 2025.
