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A clearing house is a financial institution that provides clearing and settlement services for financial and commodities derivatives and securities transactions. These transactions may be executed on a futures exchange or securities exchange, as well as off-exchange in the over-the-counter (OTC) market. A clearing house stands between two clearing firms (also known as member firms or clearing participants) and its purpose is to reduce the risk of one (or more) clearing firm failing to honor its trade settlement obligations. A clearing house reduces the settlement risks by netting offsetting transactions between multiple counterparties, by requiring collateral deposits (also called "margin deposits"), by providing independent valuation of trades and collateral, by monitoring the credit worthiness of the clearing firms, and in many cases, by providing a guarantee fund that can be used to cover losses that exceed a defaulting clearing firm's collateral on deposit. Also, it acts as a clearing firm. Once a trade has been executed by two counterparties either on an exchange, or in the OTC markets, the trade can be handed over to a clearing house, which then steps between the two original traders' clearing firms and assumes the legal counterparty risk for the trade. This process of transferring the trade title to the clearing house is called novation. It can take fractions of seconds in highly liquid futures markets; or days, or even weeks in some OTC markets. As the clearing house concentrates the risk of settlement failures into itself and is able to isolate the effects of a failure of a market participant, it also needs to be properly managed and well-capitalized〔(Primer: Derivative Instruments ). Financial Policy Forum Derivatives Study Center.〕 in order to ensure its survival in the event of a significant adverse event, such as a large clearing firm defaulting or a market crash. Many clearing house guarantee funds are capitalized with collateral from its clearing firms. In the event of a settlement failure, the clearing firm may be declared to be in default and clearing house default procedures may be utilized, which may include the orderly liquidation of the defaulting firm's positions and collateral. In the event of a significant clearing firm failure, the clearing house may draw on its guarantee fund in order to settle trades on behalf of the failed clearing firm. The term is also used for banks like Suffolk Bank that acted as a restraint on the over-issuance of private bank notes.〔Rolnick, Arthur J., Bruce D. Smith, and Warren E. Weber. "The Suffolk Bank and the Panic of 1837" ''Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review''. Vol. 24, No. 2, Spring 2000, pp. 3–13 ()〕 == Clearing of securities == When clearing securities, clearing houses either focus on a type of product or on a specific country or region, or sometimes both. The 1990s saw a trend to merged exchanges which led a number of clearing houses associated with those exchanges also merging and consolidating. This led to a number of clearing houses that cover multiple countries and that will clear all three major types of securities, bonds, stocks and derivatives. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Clearing house (finance)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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