PEER-TO-PEER LENDING
Peering over the horizon
As the peer-to-peer market continues to mature, we assess some of the key developments and look at how the various market participants are adapting.
Last year we reported that proponents of peer-to-peer securities lending were confident that its wider use would facilitate deals that would not have happened in a conventional transaction environment. The term peer-to-peer can be used to describe bi-lateral trading between asset owners, but it doesn’t end there according to Christopher Benish, asset & risk allocation portfolio manager at State of Wisconsin Investment Board. “I am having more conversations about how securities finance is a broad category of activities that includes securities lending as one tool among many including swaps, repo, and collateral transformation,” he says. “These tools can be employed between agents, banks and brokers, but also between nontraditional counterparties such as pension
Securities Finance Americas Guide 2022
funds, insurance companies, and other asset managers.” Benish observes that the Global Peer Financing Association (GPFA) has grown from four funds when it launched in the summer of 2020 to 24 global asset owners representing over $10 trillion in assets. Discussion points “In April 2022, we held our first in-person meeting as an association, bringing together nearly two dozen beneficial owners to discuss a wide range of issues over the course of two days,” he says. “We came away with a lot of ideas for future topics for discussion.” The GPFA board has not emphasised the trading aspects of peer-to-peer as much as the interaction and best practices of the participant members explains Mike Pramik, a
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