ABN Amro Clearing has become an active participant of Cboe Clear Europe’s Securities Financing Transactions (SFT) clearing service, acting in the capacity of borrower.
Jan Treuren
Cboe Clear Europe launched the clearing service in March 2025, wherein Natixis Corporate & Investment Banking acted as a principal lender against JP Morgan as a borrower, as part of the first trades cleared through the new service.
At the time, Cboe noted that several entities were already on board, with other banks, asset managers, broker-dealers, and agent lenders having also completed final testing in preparation for clearing.
The service utilises BNY and JP Morgan as tri-party collateral agents, with Pirum serving as the transmitter of new trade instructions and post-trade lifecycle events for clients.
Cboe Clear Europe is offering central clearing, settlement and post-trade lifecycle management of European SFTs in cash equities and ETFs. This service is available to principal lenders, special participant lenders (UCITS and non-UCITS) and borrowers, with settlements conducted across 19 European Central Securities Depositories (CSDs).
Jan Treuren, SFT product lead, Cboe Clear Europe, said: “Our goal is to bring significant capital and operational efficiencies to this key market by leveraging our infrastructure, technology, and pan-European cash equities footprint.
“We continue to actively onboard new participants from across the community, including principal lenders, agent lenders acting on behalf of special participant lenders (UCITS and non-UCITS beneficial owners), and borrowers.”
In Europe, there have been multiple failed attempts to successfully introduce and maintain SFT clearing, with the most recent high-profile cautionary tale coming through Eurex Clearing which announced it was shutting down its Securities Lending CCP service in 2021 as a result of low clearing volumes and a prioritisation of other businesses.
Cboe noted that the introduction of central clearing to this market at this point is particularly important given the increased regulatory, capital and operational burdens associated with SFTs resulting from the Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR), Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR), and planned Basel IV implementation.