Over the past decade, significant regulatory reforms have been implemented in order to make derivatives markets safer and more robust. A major test of these reforms came in the first half of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global financial markets and central banks intervened to provide much-needed liquidity.
While derivatives experienced volatility and liquidity pressures in line with cash markets, they continued to function without any major issues or dislocations reported by policy-makers or market participants.
The performance of derivatives markets during the pandemic reflects important changes and a significant reduction in counterparty credit risk over the past decade. As a result of the financial regulatory reforms, derivatives markets have become safer, more resilient and more transparent.
Documents (1) for Evolution of OTC Derivatives Markets Since the Financial Crisis
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The CPI Quandary
The recent US government shutdown didn’t just create weeks of political drama – it also left inflation-linked swaps dealers with a major headache: how should they determine an initial value for new trades given the US Bureau of Labor Statistics...
ISDA Response to HMT, BoE on UK CCPs
On November 18, ISDA submitted its responses to the Bank of England (BoE) consultation on ensuring the resilience of central counterparties (CCPs) and the UK Treasury’s (HMT) two draft CCP statutory instruments (SIs). These consultations form part of the update...
Doubling Down on Appropriate Trading Book Capital
Throughout ISDA’s 40th anniversary year, we’ve been reflecting on the quest for greater consistency and efficiency that underpins everything we’ve achieved since 1985. It was at the heart of the original efforts to bring greater standardization to the nascent derivatives...
Determining Initial Reference Index for New Trades
On November 25, 2025, ISDA published a Market Practice Note (MPN) to recommend a specific methodology that market participants could elect to use for the purposes of determining the Initial Reference Index for certain new inflation derivative transactions given that...