By Huw Jones
LONDON (Reuters) - Over 30 clearing houses from across the world will participate in their biggest "fire drill" to date over the coming week to simulate how they would deal with defaulting members, the European Union's securities watchdog said on Monday.
Clearers, a critical part of the financial market's basic "plumbing", are backed by default funds to ensure a stock, bond or derivatives trade is completed, even if one side of the transaction goes bust.
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), which is coordinating participation of EU clearers, said the exercise involves regulators from Britain, the United States and elsewhere along with clearers that handle trillions of dollars in trades.
Big banks are typically members of multiple clearing houses such as London Stock Exchange's LCH, ICE (NYSE:ICE) Clear, Eurex Clearing and CME Clear, creating a global web of interlinkages.
"The fact that they are executing this test at the same time may help identify potential operational bottlenecks in the procedures," ESMA said in a statement.
The exercise is expected to bring benefits to financial stability by providing a chance to share default management best practices among clearing houses, ESMA added.
Clearing volumes have increased since regulators mandated clearing of several derivatives contracts to improve market transparency after the global financial crisis of 2008 highlighted opaque corners of the market.
U.S. regulators are finalising plans to clear U.S. Treasuries, one of the world's biggest markets with global implications.
Clearing member default drills are performed at least yearly by clearing houses on an individual basis, separate from a stress test that checks on whether clearers have sufficient funds to cope with a member default.