ISLA is pleased to announce the publication of a new annex, the Master Confirmation Annex (MCA), to accompany the Global Master Securities Lending Agreement (GMSLA) documentation suite. The MCA provides a standard framework and set of terms which can be used for “non-standard” trades types (such as evergreens and extendables) and has been produced for ISLA members in response to feedback received via the ISLA Legal Survey 2020/21. The ISLA Documentation Subgroup led its development with Linklaters as appointed counsel. To access the Master Confirmation Annex, click here.
To enable ISLA members’ familiarity with the MCA, ISLA has partnered with Linklaters to run a training session on Wednesday 17 November 2021 at 16:00 GMT, that will provide an overview of how the MCA works and its various features, as well as an opportunity for members to ask any questions. To register for the session, click here.
“It was clear from the recent Legal survey that non-vanilla trade types governed by the GMSLA such as evergreens, extendables, RSLs and uncollateralised trades are not uncommon among members now and that there was a strong demand for ISLA to produce standard forms for these. As such, we set out earlier this year to create a single set of terms that can work for all of these trade types along with a wide range of different features (including bilateral and triparty collateralisation, pooled principal loans, fixed notional amounts and substitution elections). We also ensured that it could be configured such that confirmations need no longer be executed on a trade by trade basis and instead simply sent to the counterparty, which we think will significantly ease the operational burden of the execution process. Finally, we thought it important to produce the MCA in a “digitisation-friendly” format so that it could be easily consumed into internal as well as external/vendor systems in due course. We hope that the development of this MCA marks another step towards contract and clause standardisation as part of ISLA’s digitisation journey.” – Jamie Pullen, Director & Assistant General Counsel, Bank of America, and chair of ISLA Documentation Subgroup.