Monthly DSB Metrics – February 2020

Published by: Malavika Solanki

OTC ISIN creation activity held steady last month, with a 4% increase in the total number of OTC ISINs now available for use. While most headline data remained largely unchanged, there were a few notable exceptions at an instrument level, as listed here:

More OTC ISINs created in Jan 2020 (than the prior month):

• Commodity Swaptions
• Corporate and Municipal CDS
• Equity Options & Swaps on Indices and Baskets – for a range of instruments
• FX – Barrier Options, Forward Vol Agreements and FX Swaps

Fewer OTC ISINs created in Jan 2020 (than the prior month):

• Non-Standard CDS
• Equity Single Stock Swaps – for a range of instruments
• FX Forwards
• Rates – most instruments

Readers interested in understanding the types of institutions that search the DSB database for information should review the metrics published in September 2019. All other metrics – for creation and search activity – have been refreshed for December month-end and are available below.

Broad asset class trends are consistent with the previous month.

Month on Month (MoM) changes in both absolute and relative terms show variations in the number of new OTC ISINs at product level.

Search Trends: Search activity in the DSB database increased marginally in the month of  February, largely driven by higher volumes of API “Retrieve ISIN Record by Attribute” messages. Highlights include:

• FIX remains the dominant messaging protocol when interacting with the DSB – 75% of all search messages sent to the DSB using the FIX protocol
• GUI users make most use of the “Search for ISIN Records by Attributes” message and are the most common type of DSB user although they submit only 2% of all search requests