Credit Benchmark turns bank consensus into earlier, more defensible decisions.
Central Counterparties sit at the core of the financial system, with a mandate to absorb shocks, contain contagion, and maintain market stability during periods of stress. Yet today’s risk landscape is shaped by rising geopolitical tension, growing exposure to private and unrated entities, and fragmented credit information – making it harder to identify emerging vulnerabilities.
CCP risk teams make high-impact decisions on margining, exposure limits, default fund adequacy, and member participation. Yet the credit risk information informing these decisions is often delayed, incomplete or unavailable – particularly for private, unrated, or structurally complex clearing members. As a result, CCPs face a trade-off: act too late and risk spreads, act too aggressively and market participation and liquidity can be unnecessarily constrained.
Credit Benchmark provides an independent, consensus-based view of credit risk across clearing members and their broader networks, helping risk teams detect deterioration earlier and make more confident decisions on margin, participation, and exposure management.
Key Challenges for CCP Risk Teams
Traditional credit information sources leave critical gaps:
- External ratings are infrequent and often unavailable for subsidiaries, private or non-bank members
- Market indicators can be noisy, pro-cyclical, or unreliable during periods of stress
- Internal models require independent benchmarks to satisfy governance and supervisory expectations
- Cross-membership and correlated exposures are difficult to detect early
- Second-order dependencies (parent, sovereign, funding and liquidity linkages) are often opaque
The result is a persistent balancing act: acting early enough to contain risk without reacting so bluntly that market participation or liquidity is unnecessarily constrained.
What Credit Benchmark Delivers
Credit Benchmark enhances the balancing act between appropriately containing risk and ensuring efficient market participation with peer-validated credit data.
Earlier Identification of Emerging Member Risk
Consensus movements often reveal shifts in credit perception ahead of ratings changes or defaults, enabling CCPs to adjust margin and stress assumptions early — particularly amid contagion, sovereign stress, or correlated member weakness.
Independent Validation for Governance and Supervision
Credit Benchmark complements internal model validation and calibration by providing an external reference point. Strengthen committee decisions, and enhance supervisory confidence.
Improved Visibility into Private and Unrated Members
Consensus data extends credit insight beyond ratings coverage, enabling more consistent onboarding, monitoring, and limit-setting for private, unregulated, or structurally complex clearing members.
What We Do
Over the past decade, Credit Benchmark has partnered with the world’s leading banks to build a unique, consensus-based view of credit risk. Created directly from their credit risk teams, our dataset covers public and private entities globally, of which the majority are unrated by traditional credit rating agencies.
Each month, we process millions of risk observations, transforming institutional judgment into independent, consensus credit data.
Our customers are leveraging the wisdom of the crowds to prepare for a changing credit environment. This collective view of credit risk from the global banking system helps trengthen transparency, detect emerging vulnerabilities earlier, and enhance resilience across cleared markets.
Monitoring clearing member credit quality
- Monitor credit deterioration in members
- Benchmark internal credit assessments
- Detect early warning insight before rating agencies move
Collateral risk management
- Deciding which assets qualify as collateral
- Monitoring deterioration of collateral issuers
Stress testing and default fund sizing
- Default scenarios for specific members
- Sector-wide credit deterioration (e.g., European banks)
Regulatory and model validation support
- External validation benchmark
- Model calibration reference
Look-Through Risk Across Entity, Parent, Sovereign and Concentration
Risk is rarely driven by a single name in isolation. The most damaging events arise from second-order effects: correlated deterioration across clearing members, shared parent dependencies, sovereign stress, and liquidity contagion. Managing these “look-through” risks requires visibility not only at the clearing member entity level, but across parent groups, jurisdictions, and aggregate concentrations.
Credit Benchmark supports credit intelligence at four levels:
- Entity-level: clearing member monitoring, eligibility, margin add-ons
- Parent-level: group support risk and contagion across subsidiaries
- Sovereign-level: wrong-way risk and correlated domestic stress
- Aggregate views: concentration monitoring and correlated default scenarios for stress testing and default fund sizing
Below is an entity-level view from the CB web app showing the diverging credit quality of a large European investment bank and its China-based subsidiary. The subsidiary is rated two notches below its parent, unrated by a traditional ratings agency and with a total of 6 different banks’ views making up the consensus rating.
The Outcome
Credit Benchmark helps CCPs:
- Identify emerging risk earlier
- Reduce blind spots in member monitoring
- Strengthen risk committee and supervisory dialogue
- Act proportionately before stress becomes systemic
A Monthly View of Consensus Risk
Our Central Counterparty (CCP) monitor shares the consensus views of Credit Benchmark’s contributing banks and the change in the credit risk of CCPs and their members.
The purpose of the below table is to demonstrate our coverage of clearing members and is not in any way a reflection of the credit worthiness of the CCPs themselves.
This list displays those CCPs for which Credit Benchmark can generate aggregated consensus credit risk data on CCP members.
Get in touch.
Speak with our team to see how Credit Benchmark’s consensus credit data can strengthen clearing member monitoring and support more confident risk decisions.
Contact us at [email protected] or visit www.creditbenchmark.com