Change to the eligibility criteria for Short-term non-sterling liquidity facilities – Market Notice 8 August 2022

Market Notice

The Bank of England is today updating the eligibility criteria for access to its short-term non-sterling liquidity facilities, to better align eligibility with the Bank’s other lending tools. Currently only US Dollar Repo operations are active in this category.^{footnote [1]}

Previously, non-sterling liquidity facilities were open to: a) any Operational Standing Facilities Participant (except CCPs and ICSDs); and b) any Open Market Operations (OMOs) participant whose Group contained an Operational Standing Facilities Participant.

With effect from 8 August 2022, only SMF members that are participants in OMOs (which includes participants in the Indexed Long-Term Repo operations) shall be eligible to participate in these short-term non-sterling liquidity facilities.

This change will not have any immediate impact on firms that can currently use these facilities. Participants whose access to short-term non-sterling liquidity facilities is affected by this change will be given a six-month grace period before their access is removed on 10 February 2023. If uninterrupted access to short-term non-sterling liquidity facilities is required, these participants should apply for access to the Open Market Operations within the six-month grace period. Otherwise, an application for access to Open Market Operations can be made at any point in the future.

Existing participants in Open Market Operations do not need to take any action in order to retain access to non-sterling liquidity facilities.

For queries on applying to participate in the Sterling Monetary Framework or Open Market Operations, contact the applications team via email applications@bankofengland.co.uk.

More information can be found within the Supplementary Terms for US Dollar Repo.