IPE: EC heeds pension concerns on EMIR sovereign-bond collateral rule

02 August 2016

Pension schemes could be exempt from a diversification requirement relating to the use of sovereign bonds as collateral for non-centrally cleared derivatives, after the European Commission said the obligation should be scrapped.

The change concerns a provision in draft regulatory technical standards on “risk-mitigation techniques for over-the-counter derivatives not cleared by a central counterparty” under the European Markets Infrastructure Regulation.

Under the existing provision, which the Commission wants to amend, pension funds posting more than €1bn in collateral with a single counterparty cannot have more than half of that collateral in government bonds from a single country or issuer.

The Commission proposes removing the limit “in line with the co-legislators’ intention to avoid excessive burden on the retirement income of future pensioners as reflected in Recital 26 of EMIR”.

The Commission endorsed the draft RTS, including the scrapping of the aforementioned requirement for pension schemes, on 28 July.

The ESAs, which adopted the technical standards in March, have six weeks to respond to the Commission’s amendments. 

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