Adoption of confirmation matching technology such as DTCC and SwapsWire has led to reductions in the Cost per Trade reports a survey by Z/Yen Limited, the city based Market Intelligence firm.
However, processing costs are still many times higher than for securities and FX.
2006 saw large volume growth in the OTC Derivatives markets as can be seen from the table below:
|
Annual increase/decrease |
|
Trade Volume |
Cost per trade |
Interest rate derivatives |
60% |
-19% |
Credit derivatives |
73% |
-28% |
OTC equity derivatives |
160% |
-30% |
These volume increases together with the increased use of matching utilities have led to significant reductions in the market average Operations Cost per Trade.
- For Interest Rate Derivatives, the Cost per Trade reduced from $198 to $181;
- For Credit Derivatives, the Cost per Trade reduced from $196 to $141;
- For OTC Equity Derivatives, the Cost per Trade reduced from $275 to $192.
This reduction in the Cost per Trade comes after a number of years where costs had gone up due to the lack of STP in the OTC Derivatives market.
However, processing costs are still much higher than for cash products such as equities where the Cost per Trade is now below $1. Much of this cost is still in manual confirmation processing. For example, for Interest Rate Derivatives, manual confirmation processing costs $45 or 25% of the cost of a trade.
Jeremy Smith, Head of Z/Yen, said, "There has been a lack of investment in Derivative Technology going back to the late 90s. Only now, with the advent of utilities like DTCC and SwapsWire, has there been a quantum change in how Derivatives are processed. It is clear that the industry is now taking a united view to reduce both costs and risk.
The survey compared processing costs and volumes for 10 major banks for 18 product types and 17 operations & IT activities.