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 a result of this action the implementation timelines for the FSB’s November 2015 recommendations on haircuts for non-centrally cleared SFTs will now be extended (Recommendations 14-18: see also updated Annexes 1, 3 and 4 of the November 2015 report for details). The implementation of Recommendation 16 will be extended until January 2022 (instead of January 2021), recommendations 14 and 18 will be extended until January 2023 (instead of January 2022), recommendation 17 will be extended until January 2024 (instead of January 2023) and recommendation 15 will be extended until January 2025 (instead of January 2024).

A copy of the press release can be viewed here.