CLS, a financial market infrastructure group delivering settlement, processing, and data solutions, today announced that Bank of America (BofA) has gone live on its Cross Currency Swaps (CCS) service.

BofA joins other global banks using the platform to reduce settlement risk and improve efficiency amidst growing FX volumes and increased scrutiny of settlement risk by policymakers.

Cross currency swaps involve large initial and final principal exchanges, creating significant settlement risk exposure. In addition, settling these trades on a gross bilateral basis leads to operational inefficiencies and liquidity constraints. CLS’s CCS service, an extension of CLSSettlement, mitigates these risks by settling payment instructions on the CCS principal exchanges through a payment-versus-payment (PvP) settlement mechanism, designed to ensure both sides of the swap settle simultaneously, thereby eliminating counterparty failure risk on these payments.

The CCS service can be used seamlessly in conjunction with OSTTRA MarkitWire’s post-trade processing platform to integrate CCS flows into CLSSettlement. Participants can benefit from multilateral netting for their FX transactions, optimizing liquidity and significantly reducing daily funding requirements.

CLS’s CCS service continues to see significant growth, with the average daily settled value of CCS submitted to CLSSettlement increasing by 87% in 2025. This growth supports the efforts of policymakers and regulators to promote wider adoption of PvP as a key tool in reducing settlement risk.

Lisa Danino-Lewis, Chief Growth Officer at CLS, said:

“With FX trading volumes at record levels and the average daily settled value continuing to grow, mitigating settlement risk has never been more important. The continued expansion of our CCS service, alongside Bank of America’s go-live, demonstrates meaningful progress in reducing risk across the FX market.”

Carlos Fernandez-Aller, co-head of Global FICC Macro at Bank of America, commented:

“In an environment of heightened market volatility and increasing intraday liquidity demands, reducing unsecured settlement risk is a priority. This milestone demonstrates our commitment to reducing counterparty risk on cross currency swap initial and final principal exchanges while delivering operational and liquidity efficiencies that will support the continued growth of our FX business.”