IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aza/rmfi00/y2015v8i4p365-389.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The end of the waterfall: Default resources of central counterparties

Author

Listed:
  • Cont, Rama

Abstract

Central counterparties (CCPs) have become pillars of the new global financial architecture following the financial crisis of 2008. The key role of CCPs in mitigating counterparty risk and contagion has in turn cast them as systemically important financial institutions whose eventual failure may lead to potentially serious consequences for financial stability, and prompted discussions on CCP risk management standards and safeguards for recovery and resolutions of CCPs in case of failure. We contribute to the debate on CCP default resources by focusing on the incentives generated by the CCP loss allocation rules for the CCP and its members and discussing how the design of loss allocation rules may be used to align these incentives in favour of outcomes which benefit financial stability. After reviewing the ingredients of the CCP loss waterfall and various proposals for loss recovery provisions for CCPs, we examine the risk management incentives created by different ingredients in the loss waterfall and discuss possible approaches for validating the design of the waterfall. We emphasise the importance of CCP stress tests and argue that such stress tests need to account for the interconnectedness of CCPs through common members and cross-margin agreements. A key proposal is that capital charges on assets held against CCP default funds should depend on the quality of the risk management of the CCP, as assessed through independent stress tests.

Suggested Citation

  • Cont, Rama, 2015. "The end of the waterfall: Default resources of central counterparties," Journal of Risk Management in Financial Institutions, Henry Stewart Publications, vol. 8(4), pages 365-389, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:aza:rmfi00:y:2015:v:8:i:4:p:365-389
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hstalks.com/article/484/download/
    Download Restriction: Requires a paid subscription for full access.
    File URL: https://hstalks.com/article/484/
    Download Restriction: Requires a paid subscription for full access.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Friesz, Melinda & Váradi, Kata, 2023. "Your skin or mine: Ensuring the viability of a central counterparty," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    2. Christian Kubitza & Loriana Pelizzon & Mila Getmansky Sherman, 2024. "Loss Sharing in Central Clearinghouses: Winners and Losers," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(2), pages 237-273.
    3. Maximilian Jager & Frederick Zadow, 2023. "Clear(ed) Decision: The Effect of Central Clearing on Firms Financing Decision," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2023_445, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    4. Jessie Jiaxu Wang & Agostino Capponi & Hongzhong Zhang, 2022. "A Theory of Collateral Requirements for Central Counterparties," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(9), pages 6993-7017, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    CCP; central clearing; central counterparty; systemic risk; default risk; counterparty risk; default fund; OTC derivatives; mechanism design; regulation; EMIR;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G2 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services
    • E5 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aza:rmfi00:y:2015:v:8:i:4:p:365-389. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Henry Stewart Talks (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.