On March 5, ISDA submitted a letter to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to urge them to implement targeted reforms to the supplementary leverage ratio (SLR), the enhanced SLR framework and the risk-based surcharge for global systemically important bank holding companies that are important to preserve the resilience of the US Treasury markets, the US economy and the financial system more broadly.

To facilitate participation by banks in US Treasury markets – including clearing US Treasury security transactions for clients – the agencies should revise the SLR to permanently exclude on-balance-sheet US Treasuries from total leverage exposure, consistent with the scope of the temporary exclusion for US Treasuries that the agencies implemented in 2020.