Derivatives industry achieves new targets in confirmation processing, says Isda

In its 2003 operations benchmarking survey published last week, in which 64 institutions responded, Isda said that, during the calendar year 2002, participating firms met their objective of producing confirmations by five days after trade date (T+5) for forward rate agreements (FRAs), vanilla swaps and commodity derivatives.

Confirmation processing for less standardised products such as credit and equity derivatives also improved, as 83% of credit derivatives and 84% of equity derivatives confirmations were sent out in the T+5 target time.

Isda chief executive Robert Pickel said: “The derivatives industry continues to improve its operational processing performance and to set and meet more stringent goals."

The responses also show that outstanding confirmations have decreased across product areas.

Automation, including the use of Financial products Markup Language (FpML), also increased steadily. Forward rate agreements and currency options showed the highest degree of automation, with 22% of respondents auto-matching at least 50% of their confirmations. A total of 47% of the respondents plan to increase automation of credit derivatives matching capabilities in 2003.

Isda’s annual operations benchmarking survey, initiated in 2000, identifies and tracks operations processing trends in the privately negotiated derivatives industry.