The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the premier post-trade market infrastructure for the global financial services industry, and CME Group, the world's leading derivatives marketplace, announced that their expanded cross-margining arrangement, designed to create additional capital efficiencies for market participants, has received regulatory approvals from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). 

Beginning April 30, DTCC and CME Group will extend the benefits of cross-margining to end-user clients of dually registered broker/dealers and futures commission merchants (FCMs) that are common members of both the DTCC's Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC) and CME. Clients can benefit from increased capital and margin efficiencies when clearing transactions in U.S. Treasury securities through FICC and interest rate futures through CME when those transactions have offsetting risk exposures. Clients active in trading U.S. Treasury and interest rate derivatives will be able to offset eligible positions across both clearinghouses, reducing margin requirements, freeing up capital and improving liquidity. 

"The importance of efficient cross-margining opportunities across U.S. Treasury securities and futures activity is critical as centrally cleared U.S. Treasury activity continues to grow. Our current cross-margining arrangement with CME Group has a proven track record of creating an average of $1 billion across both clearing houses in risk offsets every day, and we expect the end-user cross margin effort will lead to additional offsets for the industry," said Frank La Salla, President & CEO at DTCC. "We are delivering meaningful margin and capital efficiency benefits for end-user clients, while helping our members support more effective risk management across cash U.S. Treasuries and interest rate futures. We look forward to continuing to advance our offerings to deliver optimal efficiency and capital benefits to our clients." 

"The extension of our cross-margining partnership to client accounts comes at a pivotal moment for U.S. Treasury market participants," said Terry Duffy, CME Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "With the SEC's central clearing mandates now taking effect, cross-margining is essential — not only for operational efficiency, but to help end users manage the real costs of compliance. Decades of collaboration between our two organizations and regulators have laid the groundwork, and now our partnership will deliver additional margin and capital efficiencies across the marketplace." 

CME-FICC cross-margining arrangements have been available to common clearing members with respect to their proprietary ("house") accounts since 2004, with significant enhancements to the arrangement announced in 2024. This latest expansion will now enable clearing members to extend equivalent margining benefits to their clients. 

Under the arrangement, FICC will designate cross-margin accounts, allowing all eligible positions in the account to offset with eligible CME Group interest rate futures. CME Clearing allows participants to direct futures to end-user cross-margin accounts throughout the day, thereby making them available for offset in the cross-margin arrangement.