Fitch Ratings affirmed Central Counterparty National Clearing Centre (NCC) Long-Term Foreign-Currency and Local-Currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDR) at 'BBB', and the Viability Rating (VR) at 'bbb', according to the press-release issued on August 18, 2021 by Fitch Ratings on its web site. The Outlooks are Stable.
“The affirmation of the Ratings to NCC equal to Russian Federation sovereign rating signifies efficiency and financial stability of NCC, which is a system-forming element of the Russian financial market”, said Eddie Astanin, Chairman of NCC’s Executive Board.
NCC is a central clearing counterparty on all MOEX exchange markets. And, as said in the press-release of Fitch Ratings, in its role as an intermediary between market participants, NCC acts as a counterparty for each trade and is ultimately responsible for the performance of trading obligations in case of the failure of one or more of the clearing participants.
The affirmation of the VR, in the words of Fitch Ratings, reflects NCC's exceptionally strong credit profile in the context of the Russian market, based on the entity's intrinsic strength. NCC has a high resilience to potential losses due to sound risk management and controls, the largely short-term nature of its risk exposures, and robust solvency, which is further protected by extra buffers and a loss cap (with any excess loss to be shared between market participants). The VR also reflects NCC's strong liquidity and solid profitability.
National Clearing Centre, member of Moscow Exchange Group, was established in May 2006. NCC implements functions of clearing house and central counterparty in the Russian financial market. Bank of Russia assigned NCC status of a qualifying CCP and recognized it as a systematically important central counterparty. The main and basic NCC function is to ensure stability on the segments of financial market, implementing advanced and complied with international standards risk management system and providing market participants with clearing services enabling them efficiently use their funds in the market. As of 01.08.2021, NCC capital amounts to 73,4 bln rubles.
