London and New York, NY – MarkitSERV, the leading provider of electronic trade processing solutions for OTC derivatives, today announced that its buy-side clients have used its platform to route more than three and a half trillion dollars in notional value of swaps to central clearing counterparties (CCPs).

The volume of cleared trades demonstrates the high level of operational efficiency that MarkitSERV’s platform offers buy-side firms as they prepare for regulations that mandate central clearing across a range of G20 jurisdictions. 

Henry Hunter, Head of Business Development and Product Management at MarkitSERV, said: “In finalizing their operational readiness for clearing, users of OTC derivatives are recognizing the value of a single pipe which connects them to every clearing house worldwide.  With our solution, they don’t have to worry about different workflows, APIs and other technological considerations for each clearing house.  In addition, we enable them to manage non-cleared trades alongside cleared transactions, which makes the transition smoother.”

In addition to cleared buy-side trades, MarkitSERV also handles a high volume of cleared dealer-to-dealer transactions and, since 2004, dealers have been clearing a substantial portion of their OTC derivatives trades using the connectivity provided by MarkitSERV.

MarkitSERV provides the connectivity required by any OTC derivatives market participant to route trades to CCPs that clear credit default swaps, interest rate derivatives, foreign exchange derivatives and equity derivatives.  CCPs to which MarkitSERV is connected include CME, Eurex, ICE Clear Credit, ICE Clear Europe, IDCG, LCH.Clearnet (CDSClear, ForexClear and Swapclear), Nasdaq OMX, OCC and SGX.  MarkitSERV has signed agreements to route trades to a number of additional clearing houses soon to launch, and will connect to additional ones as they come on line.

In a new initiative involving industry-wide connectivity, MarkitSERV is working closely with clearing members, execution venues and CCP’s to develop a credit limit hub that will solve the challenge of clearing certainty by providing a flexible system to enable pre-trade credit checks to help minimize the risk that trades are executed but not accepted by clearinghouses.