Cboe Clear U.S. receives temporary SEC registration as a clearing agency, starting with KPI binaries

Cboe Clear U.S. (CCUS), the clearing house of Cboe Global Markets, has received temporary registration from the SEC to operate as a Covered Clearing Agency, Cboe announced on Friday 23 October.

Until now CCUS has operated as a CFTC-registered derivatives clearing organisation (DCO). The SEC registration lets it clear securities products as well as futures and swaps.

First product: KPI binaries

Cboe said CCUS will first use the registration to clear its binary securities options on specified corporate key performance indicators (KPIs). The contracts are planned to list on Cboe Options Exchange and to be available on Robinhood in the fourth quarter of 2026.

The SEC approved the KPI binary options on 13 October. They pay a fixed amount if a reported company metric, such as a sales or delivery figure, finishes at or above (or below) the strike.

Correction: Our 13 October article said the KPI options would clear through OCC. That was wrong. The SEC’s approval order said Cboe intended to clear them through CCUS, subject to CCUS obtaining temporary registration as a clearing agency, and that Cboe would not list the contracts until the related CCUS filings were approved by the Commission or effective. We have updated that article.

“Clearing plays a critical role in bringing innovation to market,” said Dale Michaels, head of Cboe Clear U.S. He said the expanded capabilities “position Cboe Clear U.S. to become an innovation lane to support new products and meet evolving customer needs”.

OCC still clears traditional options

Cboe said the move complements its “longstanding partnership” with the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) and its commitment to the established clearing infrastructure for traditional equity options. Cboe’s release does not say CCUS will clear any products that OCC currently clears.

The rest of the CCUS build-out

According to Cboe’s release:

• CCUS recently received CFTC approval to clear margined futures broadly, and it still clears digital asset derivatives as a DCO.
• In June CCUS elected to become a Subpart C DCO, voluntarily adopting the enhanced standards the CFTC applies to systemically important DCOs for financial resources, risk management and operational resilience.
• Cboe pointed to Cboe Clear Europe, which it describes as the leading pan-European equities central counterparty and which has expanded into securities financing transaction clearing.

What we are watching

• The terms of the temporary registration, including how long it lasts and what conditions the SEC has set. Neither Cboe’s release nor any SEC document we have seen makes them public.
• Which clearing firms sign up to CCUS for the KPI contracts, and when in the fourth quarter they list.
• Whether Cboe moves other new securities products, beyond KPI binaries, to CCUS.