The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) jointly agreed on enabling exchange-traded interest rate futures (IRF) this week. Interest rate futures are derivative contracts which have an interest bearing security as the underlying instrument. The introduction of this instrument will help banks, insurance companies, bond houses and provident funds manage risks arising from interest rate fluctuations in their fixed income portfolios. Foreign portfolio investors have been allowed to tradeand banks have been allowed to participate in IRFs, but limits have been put in place to keep their influence under check.
This is the second attempt to introduce IRFs. IRFs were launched over five years ago by the NSE, but did not take off due to deficiencies in product design and banks not being allowed to trade in these products. The new IRFs are based on the yield-to-maturity (YTM) curve, which is used daily by traders for their calculations. To start with, futures contracts will be based on the 10-year government bond, with a semi-annual coupon of 7%. There would be quarterly contracts worth Rs 2 lakh crore per contract. Limits have been placed on gross-open positions of clients across all contracts at 6% of the total open interest or Rs 300 crore, whichever is higher.
Source:ET
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