Singapore/Hong Kong, 9 December 2021 – ISDA (International Swaps and Derivatives Association) has won Industry Association of the Year in the 4th Regulation Asia Awards for Excellence 2021 at an online ceremony on 9 December 2021.
ISDA was recognised for its work to foster safe and efficient derivatives markets and facilitate effective risk management for users of derivatives products, by promoting high standards of conduct, developing best practices and leading industry action and advocacy on derivatives issues.
A key area of focus has been to support a smooth transition away from LIBOR and other IBORs. ISDA has developed fallbacks for IBOR-linked derivatives which came into effect early this year, ensuring a viable safety net is in place for firms and mitigating a key source of global systemic risk. The fallbacks protocol has gained widespread acceptance, with over 14,900 parties across 90 jurisdictions adhering to the protocol.
ISDA has also played a foundational role in helping the industry prepare for compliance with the initial margin requirements for non-cleared derivatives. Besides developing standard IM documentation and helping to shape global implementation timelines, ISDA created the widely used ISDA SIMM, a standard model for calculating initial margin, and ISDA Create, which allows users to produce and agree documentation completely online, as well as digitally catch, process and store legal data from these documents.
On Basel III, ISDA has developed an industry standard for benchmarking which seeks to ensure implementation by banks is consistent with their peers around the world. With an initial focus on the FRTB, the initiative has expanded to also cover SA-CCR and the revised CVA framework. ISDA is leveraging its in-house technology platform, Perun, to provide highly detailed analysis on more than 100 hypothetical portfolios, with 64 banks, including 23 G-SIBs, participating in the exercise.
ISDA is also working on a number of digitisation initiatives that will improve efficiency and cut costs for derivatives market participants. ISDA’s Common Domain Model (CDM) has established a single, common digital representation of derivative lifecycle events and processes, paving the way for the development of automated and scalable industry solutions, as well as a future global reporting framework based on machine-readable and executable regulations.
ISDA has also launched a new digital documentation platform called MyLibrary, which improves the ability of firms to efficiently access and navigate ISDA documents and reduces complexity within the documentation, making contract negotiation quicker, more efficient, and more consistent. MyLibrary includes the new 2021 ISDA Interest Rate Derivatives Definitions, ISDA’s first natively digital definitional booklet.
On the ESG front, ISDA has been working to ensure that industry standards and best practices are globally aligned in key areas that include sustainability-linked derivatives, the accounting treatment of ESG transactions, and capital requirements for carbon certificates under FRTB. ISDA has also published a variety of templates to support the trading of emissions and certain types of environmental derivatives.
Today, ISDA has over 960 member institutions from 78 countries.
About the Regulation Asia Awards for Excellence 2021
The Regulation Asia Awards for Excellence recognises financial institutions, technology companies, legal and consulting firms, exchanges and other players that help to ensure the highest standards for regulatory compliance are upheld in the financial industry. Each year, senior industry practitioners serve on a judging panel to help assess and score each submission to determine the winning entrants.
For a full list of the award 2021 winners, visit www.regulationasia.com/awards.
About Regulation Asia
Regulation Asia is the leading source for actionable regulatory intelligence for Asia Pacific markets. With over 12,000 subscribers, including regulatory bodies, exchanges, banks, asset managers and service providers, Regulation Asia plays a key role in shaping the regulatory agenda.
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