Johannesburg Stock Exchange launches JSE Eris Interest Rate Swap Futures

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Capital Markets in Africa) — The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), the continent’s largest exchange, today have officially launched JSE Eris Interest Rate Swap (IRS) Futures. 

The new JSE Eris Interest Rate Swap (IRS) Futures will be based on the Johannesburg Interbank Agreed Rate (JIBAR) and denominated in South African Rand (ZAR).

The product will follow the standard South African swap market conventions while using the Eris MethodologyTM, allowing the contracts to replicate the cash flows of over the counter (OTC) swaps. The new product offering will be available for trading by all registered Interest Rate market members and their clients and will be cleared through JSE Clear.

“Bringing this product to market has been a collaborative effort between us, our clients and our partnership with Eris.  After significant engagement with market participants we took a global product and modified it to make it a truly South African product relevant to the South African market needs,” says Warren Geers, Head: Interest Rates and Currencies at the JSE.

“Eris congratulates the JSE on today’s launch of JSE Eris Swap Futures, which utilise the Eris Methodology to offer the South African market the cash flows of interest rate swaps in a capital-efficient futures form,” said Neal Brady, CEO of Eris Exchange. “We look forward to growth in JSE Eris Swap Futures similar to what we have seen in the U.S., where year-to-date volumes are twice that of last year.”

The new IRS Swap Futures will be competitively priced; clients will be charged R1 per contract (R100 000) for 1 and 2 year tenors and R2 for any tenors greater than 2 years.  The JSE will make appropriate pricing alignment as the product gathers more trading momentum.

The swap futures which are based on the Eris Methodology remain futures throughout the full lifecycle of the contract with no risk of physical delivery and can be held to their maturity date. 

In a first of its kind and truly innovative move, the JSE will use a portfolio VaR framework to determine the amount of initial margin participants should post for position in the swap futures product suite, instead of the traditional portfolio scanning framework (j-SPAN) that is used for all other futures at the JSE.  Portfolio level initial margin will thus recognise the offsets associated with trading long and short positions across the curve.

“We believe that providing these swap futures products via the JSE will offer our clients the regulatory certainty of futures and allow market participants to operate within the familiar eco-system of exchange traded futures,” concludes Geers. 

Looking forward, the JSE expects trading of the IRS Swap Futures to pick up in the last quarter of 2015 as clients are in the process of ensuring their systems are equipped to start trading the new Eris Interest Rate Swap (IRS) futures.