The International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Inc. (“ISDA“) recently published two documents prepared by its Collateral Committee in response to requests from regulators. Both documents should be of interest to end-users and other market participants. The documents are available on ISDA’s Web site at: http://www.isda.org/c_and_a/collateral.html

The first document, a “Market Review of OTC Derivative Bilateral Collateralization Practices,” was undertaken at the request of the U.K. Financial Services Authority on behalf of an international group of OTC derivative supervisors. This document provides an excellent overview of bilateral collateral agreements and practices, and provides explanations of why certain parties do (and others do not) agree o exchange collateral to mitigate counterparty credit risk. The document also contains interesting reliminary data from ISDA’s 2010 Margin Survey...