The Financial Stability Board (FSB) announced extensions to the implementation timelines for minimum haircut standards for non-centrally cleared securities financing transactions (SFTs), to ease operational burdens on market participants and authorities, and thereby assist them in focusing on priorities from the impact of COVID-19.
SFTs such as securities lending and repurchase agreements (repos) play a crucial role in supporting price discovery and secondary market liquidity for a wide variety of securities. However, such transactions can also be used to take on leverage as well as maturity and liquidity mismatched exposures, and therefore can pose risks to financial stability.
As part of its work to enhance the resilience of non-bank financial intermediation, the FSB developed 18 policy recommendations to address financial stability risks that arise from SFTs. These recommendations were published in the FSB’s August 2013 report Policy Framework for Addressing Shadow Banking Risks in Securities Lending and Repos and updated in the November 2015 report Regulatory framework for haircuts on non-centrally cleared securities financing transactions.
The Group of Central Bank Governors and Heads of Supervision decided in March 2020 to defer the implementation of the Basel III framework by one year to January 2023. Since the FSB framework for numerical haircut floors for bank-to-non-bank transactions is expected to be implemented through the Basel III framework in many jurisdictions, the FSB has therefore decided to also extend the implementation dates by one year for its policy recommendations related to minimum haircut standards for non-centrally cleared SFTs.
For bank-to-non-bank transactions, the updated implementation date is January 2023 (instead of January 2022). For non-bank-to-non-bank transactions, the updated implementation date is January 2025 (instead of January 2024). This is in line with the re-prioritisation of the FSB’s work in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and will give market participants (both banks and non-banks) more time to prepare for the implementation of the framework of numerical haircut floors set out in minimum haircut standards.