November 17, 2014
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York today selected three firms that will participate in the Mortgage Operations Counterparty Pilot Program, which was announced in August:
- Brean Capital LLC (New York, NY)
- Loop Capital Markets LLC (Chicago, IL)
- Mischler Financial Group, Inc. (Corona del Mar, CA)
The New York Fed’s intent in conducting this program for small firms is to explore ways to broaden access to open market operations, and to determine the extent to which firms beyond the Primary Dealer community can augment the New York Fed’s operational capacity and resiliency in its monetary policy operations. In order to maximize the information gained from this pilot, the New York Fed selected a subset of eligible firms that are diverse with respect to characteristics such as size and geographic reach. Conducting the pilot program with a small number of firms will keep the New York Fed’s operational costs relatively low and will also reduce the time needed to onboard these new counterparties.
The selected firms will participate as counterparties for the Open Market Trading Desk (the Desk) along with Primary Dealers in the Desk’s agency mortgage-backed securities operations. The program will run for about one year.1
Selection for this pilot program does not constitute designation as a Primary Dealer and would not be a factor considered as part of the competitive selection process for any permanent program the New York Fed may establish in the future.
For more information on the program and process, see http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/moc-pilot.html.
1 The length of the program should not be viewed as providing any information about the stance of monetary policy.
