This year marks the 40^th anniversary of ISDA – in May 1985, a group of 10 dealers established the association in New York and published the very first standard document for the nascent over-the-counter derivatives market. Forty years on, the market is bigger, more global and more diverse, and so too is ISDA, having evolved in lockstep with the industry. The commitment to safe, efficient markets has never wavered. That’s where you can expect ISDA to double down in 2025, as we begin to chart the next 40 years of the association’s history.

In the early years, the development of standard documentation helped to alleviate a back-office logjam that had constrained ambitions and limited the growth of the market. Forty years on, ISDA’s suite of industry documentation has grown in line with the market, with more than 160 documents and document versions now available in digital form on ISDA MyLibrary. ISDA’s pioneers would never have imagined the huge benefits digitization would bring to the documentation of trades and compliance with regulation. In its 40^th anniversary year, helping market participants to reap those benefits is a priority for ISDA.

ISDA now boasts a wide-ranging set of mutualized industry solutions to automate derivatives market processes and we’ll be pushing particularly hard on two of these in 2025. First, ISDA’s Digital Regulatory Reporting (DRR) initiative has established itself as a valuable tool to improve the accuracy of reported data, reducing costs and cutting the risk of regulatory penalties. Following a rush of reporting rule updates last year, several other jurisdictions will follow in 2025, including Canada and Hong Kong. The DRR will be expanded to support market participants in implementing those new rule sets, as well as reflecting future updates to any of the rules supported by the DRR.

Second, we’ll be moving at pace to bring the ISDA Notices Hub to market. This will be a powerful industry facility that will enable the instantaneous delivery and receipt of critical termination notices, eliminating the risk exposures and potential losses that can result from delays in terminating derivatives contracts. It will also maintain a golden source of updated office addresses for those counterparty relationships where physical delivery of notices will continue. We have found strong industry support for the Notices Hub and are looking forward to making it available via S&P Global Market Intelligence’s Counterparty Manager platform.

The policy agenda for 2025 will also be keeping ISDA busy. It is not yet clear what path the Basel III ‘endgame’ package will take under the new administration in the US, but ISDA will continue to advocate relentlessly for risk-appropriate rules that support deep and liquid markets. A year ago, we highlighted the negative impact the proposed rules would have on liquidity and the ability of banks to offer client clearing services. We proposed a series of calibration changes to improve the risk sensitivity of the framework, and it is critical that these are incorporated into the rules. We simply have to get this right.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Treasury clearing rules, which are due to be implemented on a phased basis from the end of this year, are also high on ISDA’s agenda. Given the extensive workload and the complex nature of introducing clearing in this market, spanning document negotiation, cross-netting capital issues and operational integration, ISDA will request that policymakers adopt a more appropriate implementation timetable.

This wide-ranging book of work includes very different issues and priorities to those contemplated by ISDA’s founders in 1985. As we look back on those early days and celebrate all that it has achieved in its first 40 years, I am confident ISDA will continue to deliver value for market participants through standards and mutualized solutions. Forty years might feel like a long time, but we’re just getting started.

Read the latest edition of latest edition of IQ magazine – Marking a Milestone – which explores ISDA’s early landmarks.