FICC Shakes Up Crypto Markets with Game-Changing ’Collateral-in-Lieu’ Filing

Wall Street's traditional finance machinery just got a crypto-compatible upgrade—and the implications are massive.

The Fixed Income Clearing Corporation's latest filing doesn't just tweak margins—it rewrites the rulebook. Suddenly, digital assets stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Treasury bonds and blue-chip stocks as acceptable collateral. That means institutional players can now leverage their crypto holdings without liquidating positions—a move that injects serious liquidity into previously frozen capital.

Regulators green-lighted the structure, but skeptics whisper this is another case of 'innovate first, ask questions during the next crisis.' Because nothing says financial progress like finding new ways to pledge speculative assets against even riskier exposures—all neatly filed under 'collateral optimization.'

One thing's clear: the old guard is finally building bridges to the new economy. Whether those bridges hold under pressure? That's tomorrow's problem.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation(DTCC), the premier post-trade market infrastructure for the global financial services industry, announced that its Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC) subsidiary has formally filed with the SEC a rule filing to enhance FICC’s Sponsored Service with a new cleared tri-party offering known as the Sponsored General Collateral (GC) “Collateral-in-Lieu” service.

The filing is expected to be published in the Federal Register soon, which will begin a public comment period.

This innovative new enhancement is designed to solve for critical industry concerns regarding the need for enhanced margin and capital efficiency to ensure a smooth implementation of the U.S. Treasury Clearing mandate. The proposed service is uniquely designed to leverage the haircut typically posted by dealers to money market funds and other cash investors in tri-party via a CCP lien that is applied “in lieu” of both a Sponsor guaranty of client performance and the posting of margin to the CCP(in most circumstances), thereby solving for the so-called “double-margining” challenge. This challenge is created because Sponsors typically post haircuts to money market funds to satisfy overcollateralization requirements as well as post CCP margin on their behalf.

“The Sponsored Service has been an incredibly popular buyside clearing solution, with over $2T in volume flowing through the Service on a typical day,” stated Laura Klimpel, Managing Director, Head of DTCC’s Fixed Income and Financing Solutions. “The proposed Collateral-in-Lieu service has been intentionally designed to build upon that success and allow Sponsors and their clients to leverage many of their existing legal agreements and operational processes for Sponsored repo, but take the margin and capital efficiencies of the product to the next level.  We welcome SEC and public input as we advance this important initiative.”

The Collateral-in-Lieu service WOULD be offered by FICC leveraging BNY’s tri-party infrastructure to support the collateral management and settlement of the Collateral-in-Lieu repo trades, with both “done-away” and “done-with” styles of trade execution to be supported in the service.

“The FICC’s Sponsored GC Collateral-in-Lieu service is precisely the type of solution the industry needs to meet the SEC’s central clearing rule in a capital- and margin-efficient way,” said Nate Wuerffel, BNY’s Global Head of Market Structure and Product Leader for the Global Collateral Platform. “Built using BNY’s global collateral platform—the largest Treasury tri-party repo settlement venue—Collateral-in-Lieu offers Treasury market participants streamlined, efficient access to central clearing.”

FICC aims to launch the Collateral-in-Lieu service in December 2025, subject to regulatory approval of the filing.

Source: DTCC