MNI BRIEF: OFR Proposes Rule To Fill Repo Data Gap

The U.S. Office of Financial Research proposed a plan Thursday to collect data on the opaque non-centrally cleared bilateral repo market, in what would be a step toward better understanding the risk that hedge funds' growing presence in short-term funding markets poses to the financial system.

The OFR's proposal is estimated to cover 40 financial companies, including primary and nonprimary dealers, and bank- and nonbank-affiliated dealers, and would require them to submit 33 data elements each day for all outstanding non-centrally cleared bilateral repurchase agreement transactions, such as haircut, rate, and optionality. The Financial Stability Oversight Council, among others, has recommended that the OFR consider ways to obtain better data on the USD2 trillion non-centrally cleared bilateral repurchase agreement market, an important source of leverage for hedge funds.

MNI has reported the OFR, an arm of the Treasury Department created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act to promote financial stability, would be issuing a proposal to collect the data while aiming to minimize bureaucratic burdens. The OFR has already gathered some repo data from nine volunteer institutions for three days last summer and learned that most trades were transacted with zero haircut, a point of concern among regulators.