Clearing portability under threat as FCM pool shrinks

Failure of big clearing brokers could see clients unable to move to stable competitors

Dwindling pool of clearing providers is giving rise to fears over systemic risk

The decline in the number of banks providing clearing to the over-the-counter derivatives markets – and attendant concentration of client margin at the five largest swaps clearing banks – is causing increasing alarm among senior policymakers and regulatory advisers, who question how the market would cope if one of these firms were to default.

“It is a serious, unintended consequence of regulation that this could be a problem in a crisis,” says Darrell Duffie, professor of finance at Stanford