Article 328 Interest rate futures and forwardsX1

Interest-rate futures, forward-rate agreements (FRAs) and forward commitments to buy or sell debt instruments shall be treated as combinations of long and short positions. Thus a long interest-rate futures position shall be treated as a combination of a borrowing maturing on the delivery date of the futures contract and a holding of an asset with maturity date equal to that of the instrument or notional position underlying the futures contract in question. Similarly a sold FRA will be treated as a long position with a maturity date equal to the settlement date plus the contract period, and a short position with maturity equal to the settlement date. Both the borrowing and the asset holding shall be included in the first category set out in Table 1 in Article 336 in order to calculate the own funds requirement for specific risk for interest-rate futures and FRAs. A forward commitment to buy a debt instrument shall be treated as a combination of a borrowing maturing on the delivery date and a long (spot) position in the debt instrument itself. The borrowing shall be included in the first category set out in Table 1 in Article 336 for purposes of specific risk, and the debt instrument under whichever column is appropriate for it in the same table.

For the purposes of this Article, ‘ long position ’ means a position in which an institution has fixed the interest rate it will receive at some time in the future, and ‘ short position ’ means a position in which it has fixed the interest rate it will pay at some time in the future.