CME Group Sets December Launch for New U.S. Treasury Clearing House

CME Group announced on September 10, 2026 that it will launch CME Securities Clearing Inc., its new SEC-registered clearing agency, on December 7, 2026, pending all necessary regulatory approvals. The Chicago-based company said the clearing house will give market participants a new option to clear U.S. Treasury cash and repurchase agreement transactions and to comply with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s central clearing mandate for the Treasury market.

According to the announcement, CME Securities Clearing will support both “done-with” and “done-away” execution and clearing, allowing clearing members and independent users to optimize capital efficiencies across cash Treasuries, repo, and CME Group interest rate futures. Eligible firms will be able to offset margin associated with eligible positions across both CME Group clearing houses, which the company states reduces margin requirements, frees up capital and improves liquidity.

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Terry Duffy said U.S. debt has reached a record $40 trillion and that the clearing mandate is months away. “Along with our existing cross-margining arrangement with FICC, which already produces over $2 billion in daily margin savings, CME Securities Clearing will provide another capital-efficient clearing option precisely when the market needs it most,” Duffy said. He added that, together, the complementary offerings give clients greater choice and a lower total cost to clear.

Suzanne Sprague, CME Group Chief Operating Officer and Global Head of Clearing and Post-Trade Services, called the launch “the culmination of years of preparation and a natural extension of CME Group’s expertise in clearing interest rate risk.” She said that by offering cross-margining between both CME Group clearing houses, as well as between CME Clearing and FICC, eligible firms will have multiple avenues to secure the capital efficiencies that come from offsetting cash and futures positions.

The SEC’s Treasury Clearing Mandate

The launch is built around rule changes the SEC adopted on December 13, 2023, which require covered clearing agencies in the U.S. Treasury market to adopt written policies and procedures reasonably designed to require their members to submit specified secondary market transactions for clearing. Those transactions include all repurchase and reverse repurchase agreements collateralized by U.S. Treasury securities entered into by a clearing agency member, unless the counterparty is a state or local government or another clearing organization or the trade is an inter-affiliate transaction; all purchase and sale transactions entered into by a member that is an interdealer broker; and all purchase and sale transactions between a member and a registered broker-dealer, a government securities broker or a government securities dealer.

The 2023 amendments exempt transactions in which the counterparty is a central bank, sovereign entity, international financial institution or natural person. They also require covered clearing agencies to collect and calculate margin for house and customer transactions separately, and they permit broker-dealers to include customer margin required and on deposit at a Treasury clearing agency as a debit in the customer reserve formula, subject to certain conditions. In the adopting release, then-SEC Chair Gary Gensler said that 70 to 80 percent of the Treasury funding market and at least 80 percent of the cash markets were uncleared, and he described the $26 trillion Treasury market as the deepest, most liquid market in the world.

As adopted, the amendments were to take effect in phases: changes regarding the separation of house and customer margin, the broker-dealer customer protection rule and access to central clearing were required by March 31, 2025, with compliance with the clearing requirement itself set for December 31, 2025 for cash transactions and June 30, 2026 for repurchase transactions. The SEC states on its Treasury Clearing Implementation page that the Commission extended the original compliance dates by one year, to December 31, 2026 for eligible cash market transactions and June 30, 2027 for eligible repo market transactions.

Registration and Clearing House Design

CME Securities Clearing filed its Form CA-1 application under Section 17A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 on December 13, 2024, seeking registration as a clearing agency to provide central counterparty services for transactions involving U.S. Treasury securities. Notice of the application was published in the Federal Register on January 22, 2025; the Commission instituted proceedings on April 18, 2025 and designated a longer period for action on July 21, 2025; and the applicant agreed to extend the review period on September 30, 2025. The Commission granted the application in an order dated December 1, 2025, noting that each comment letter it received either explicitly supported approval or generally supported expanded access to Treasury clearing through new clearing agencies. CME Group announced the approval on December 2, 2025, stating at that time that launch was expected in the second quarter of 2026.

According to the registration order, CME Securities Clearing is a Delaware corporation wholly owned by CME Group Inc. (CME ), which serves as its sole shareholder and primary service provider. It will be managed by a nine-member board of directors with at least five independent directors, with one board position reserved for a representative of a member and one for a representative of a user.

The order describes two participant types. Members clear proprietary eligible transactions and authorize Users; Users must be authorized by a Member but settle directly with the clearing agency, and they are classified as Independent Users, which post their own margin, or Supported Users, for which the authorizing Member posts margin. Registered broker-dealers, supervised banks, futures commission merchants, qualifying unregistered investment pools and proprietary trading firms are eligible to become Members or Users, while trust companies, registered clearing agencies, registered investment companies and insurance companies are eligible to become Users. Under the clearing agency’s Rule 306(b), a broker-dealer applicant must have at least $20 million in net capital under Rule 15c3-1 to become a Member.

The clearing agency will accept three transaction types: tri-party Clear to Hold Transactions, Clear to Deliver Transactions and Cash Treasury Transactions. Following validation, trades are novated, with CME Securities Clearing becoming the buyer to each seller and the seller to each buyer. Repo transactions that settle on trade date settle in real time on a gross basis, while cash and repo transactions settling the next day with identical CUSIPs settle on a net basis, the order states.

Initial margin will be calculated under the SPAN 2 framework, which the order describes as designed to achieve 99 percent coverage over a margin period of risk of at least two business days. The Guaranty Fund, funded by Members, will be maintained at least equal to the largest theoretical loss to the clearing agency in excess of initial margin resulting from the default of two Member Families. The clearing agency’s fee schedule under its Rule 801 was still being finalized at the time of the order; fees must be equitably allocated, filed with the Commission as proposed rule changes and published on the clearing agency’s website when its clearing services launch.

Separately, the Commission approved on April 15, 2026 an amended and restated cross-margining agreement between FICC and CME allowing cross-margining at the customer level, and it published a notice that broker-dealers may include a debit in their customer and/or PAB reserve computations when depositing cash, U.S. Treasury securities or qualified customer securities to meet a margin requirement of CME Securities Clearing resulting from customers’ Treasury positions. The SEC’s implementation page also lists an application by ICE Clear Credit and an order granting its registration to provide Treasury clearing services.