Central Clearing of OTC Derivatives: bilateral vs multilateral netting

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how central clearing affects OTC derivatives exposures, showing that realistic assumptions favor central clearing's effectiveness in reducing interdealer risks compared to bilateral netting.

Contribution

It provides a nuanced analysis of the tradeoffs between multilateral and bilateral netting, emphasizing the importance of asset heterogeneity and correlations in assessing central clearing benefits.

Findings

Central clearing generally reduces interdealer exposures under realistic assumptions.

Adding a CCP for credit derivatives decreases overall exposures when a CCP for interest rate derivatives exists.

Results are robust across different model assumptions and risk measures.

Abstract

We study the impact of central clearing of over-the-counter (OTC) transactions on counterparty exposures in a market with OTC transactions across several asset classes with heterogeneous characteristics. The impact of introducing a central counterparty (CCP) on expected interdealer exposure is determined by the tradeoff between multilateral netting across dealers on one hand and bilateral netting across asset classes on the other hand. We find this tradeoff to be sensitive to assumptions on heterogeneity of asset classes in terms of `riskyness' of the asset class as well as correlation of exposures across asset classes. In particular, while an analysis assuming independent, homogeneous exposures suggests that central clearing is efficient only if one has an unrealistically high number of participants, the opposite conclusion is reached if differences in riskyness and correlation across asset classes are realistically taken into account. We argue that empirically plausible specifications of model parameters lead to the conclusion that central clearing does reduce interdealer exposures: the gain from multilateral netting in a CCP overweighs the loss of netting across asset classes in bilateral netting agreements. When a CCP exists for interest rate derivatives, adding a CCP for credit derivatives is shown to decrease overall exposures. These findings are shown to be robust to the statistical assumptions of the model as well as the choice of risk measure used to quantify exposures.