Process or die, says Isda chairman Moulds

The continued growth of the derivatives industry will depend on the industry’s ability to improve processing efficiencies, said Jonathan Mould, chairman of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, this morning.

“We need to apply the same spirit of innovation to how we trade and how we process those trades as we have done and continue to do in developing new risk management tools and techniques,” Moulds told delegates attending the annual general meeting of the trade association in Barcelona.

He said regulators are not wrong to ask questions and raise issues related to the backlog of confirmations at leading investment banks. “We should not be surprised at this – in many respects it is a reflection of how important many parts of our industry have become,” said Moulds, who is also head of international debt and equity at Bank of America.

He said Isda´s takeover of the Financial products Mark-up Language initiative would reap significant industry-wide benefits. “To a large extent, the future of our business is about our future use of technology,” Moulds added.