Singapore and Australia tie-up to boost derivatives transparency: Reuters

It’s time for significant trading reforms.

Singapore and Australia have agreed to give each other access to trade repositories, or databases of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives trading, pushing for transparency in Asia's top two hubs for such transactions.

A report by Reuters says that leaders of Group of Twenty nations agreed to a series of measures after the global financial crisis to increase the transparency of the $600 trillion OTC derivatives market, but reforms have been hindered by the difficulty for national regulators to share information on cross-border trades without breaking rules on banking confidentiality.

Here’s more from Reuters:

However, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission have now agreed to allow trade repositories licensed in one jurisdiction to provide data to the authority in the other jurisdiction, they said in a joint press statement on Wednesday.

"This reflects MAS's strong support for the effective implementation of OTC derivatives trade reporting reforms in Singapore and other jurisdictions in the region, includingAustralia, as part of ongoing global efforts to enhance transparency and to reduce systemic risk in the OTC derivatives markets," said Ong Chong Tee, deputy managing director at MAS.