Eurex Clears First Inflation Swap Transactions

Eurex Clearing, CCP and part of Deutsche Börse Group, has cleared its first inflation swap transactions, Deutsche Börse Group announced today. Initial trades were submitted by BNP Paribas, UniCredit and Societe Generale.
This demonstrates a continued commitment from international banks to meet end client demand and access more OTC products at Eurex Clearing, according to the announcement.

Inflation swaps are used to transfer the risk of inflation from one party to another through an exchange of cash flows. While one party pays a fixed rate cash flow on a notional principal amount, the other party pays a floating rate linked to an inflation index.
These contracts are most commonly linked to consumer price indexes. Eurex offers the clearing of zero-coupon inflation swaps (ZCIS) for the eurozone Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices excl. Tobacco (HICPxT), the French Consumer Price Index (FRCPIx), and the UK Retail Price Index (UK RPI).
“Having these major international banks clear their first trades on our platform is a great first step for this product. It shows clear support for our efforts to build an alternative EU27-based liquidity pool. And it further underlines our goal of becoming the global home of the euro yield curve,” Danny Chart, Eurex’s head of OTC product and clearing business development, said.
Based on both risk and cost considerations, a greater number of banks and buy-side clients are striving to distribute their portfolios across clearing houses.
Emmanuel Issman, head of structured fixed income derivatives at UniCredit explained that the allocation of exposure across CCPs is better from a risk perspective: “We see end clients increasingly favouring a second choice and seeking to clear OTC products through Eurex Clearing.”
Increased efficiency for buy-side firms
Besides risk efficiencies, clients benefit from operational savings by reducing fragmentation within a single currency and bundling central clearing across multiple asset classes.
Stephane Salas, head of European inflation trading at BNP Paribas said that if you only need to use one pool of collateral then you only get one margin call, and so on. “This is going to be a big opportunity for buy-side firms to further increase efficiency,” he added.
“As a leader on inflation products we are very happy to be among the first to clear inflation swap trades on Eurex Clearing. Contributing to the development of a new liquidity pool and broadening our offering will be beneficial to our client base and to the market as a whole,” Mohamed Braham, head of trading for fixed income and currencies at Societe Generale, noted.