The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has developed several initiatives to reduce risk in the post-trade environment. In collaboration with the financial services industry, it is working to shorten the settlement cycle in the US. It formed an industry steering committee and an industry working group to facilitate the move from T+3 to T+2 for trades in equities, corporate and municipal bonds, and unit investment trusts (UITs).

In 2013 the Depositary Trust Company (DTC) began introducing settlement matching to clients in an effort to reduce risk and boost intraday settlement finality. Settlement matching leverages DTC’s existing infrastructure to provide participants with the ability to authorize or match transactions before it attempts to process them. This initiative, which is being implemented in a phased-approach, has removed approximately $525bn of risk from the DTC settlement system.

The DTCC and Euroclear have created a joint venture to create collateral processing solutions. The joint venture will bring to market their Margin Transit Utility (MTU) and Collateral Management Utility (CMU).

The MTU will provide straightthrough- processing of margin obligation settlement, leveraging the current DTCC infrastructure, as well as additional infrastructure currently in development in coordination with the industry. Industry testing of the MTU is scheduled to begin in mid-2015. The CMU will address the global challenge of sub-optimal collateral allocation and mobility, through utilising Euroclear’s Collateral Highway, and will follow the launch of the MTU.

US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca, came into force on July 1 2014, requiring foreign institutions to hand over data on clients to the US International Revenue Service (IRS).