Benchmark shifts and a sweeping data clean-up redraw Canada's derivatives landscape in 2025
A regulatory overhaul and removal of stale trades reshaped Canada's OTC derivatives market in 2025, producing record gross notional outstanding figures and dramatic shifts in reported market composition.
Canada's total OTC derivatives GNO rose 12.2 percent to $121tn in the fourth quarter of 2025, up from $108tn a year earlier, according to the Ontario Securities Commission's (OSC) Canadian OTC Derivatives 2025 Annual Report, published May 21.
Interest rate derivatives drove the gain, with GNO climbing 15.5 percent to $106tn and their share of the domestic market rising to 88.2 percent of total GNO.
Globally, the OTC derivatives market reached a record $1,145tn in June 2025, up 15.2 percent from June 2024, according to 2025 S2 Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Derivatives Data.
Canada's share of that market slipped from 10.8 percent to 9.2 percent over the same period, with Canadian interest rate derivatives GNO falling from $94tn to $90tn even as the global interest rate market expanded from $791tn to $906tn, the OSC reported.
Much of what drove apparent shifts in outstanding positions and average trade sizes was not new market activity but a cleanup of bad data.
During compliance examinations, OSC staff identified large volumes of stale or expired contracts for differences (CFDs) and other transactions still reported as active.
Terminating those positions, combined with amendments to OSC Rule 91-507 that came into force on July 25, 2025, materially improved reporting accuracy across asset classes.
The effect was stark.
The share of outstanding positions held by interest rate derivatives jumped from 10.5 percent to 47.2 percent between the fourth quarter of 2024 and the fourth quarter of 2025, while currency derivatives fell from 39.1 percent to 23.6 percent and equity derivatives dropped from 29.9 percent to 22.0 percent.
Average GNO per currency derivatives transaction surged 469 percent to $23m, and average equity derivatives transaction size rose 546 percent to $4m, both reflecting the removal of large numbers of small, incorrectly reported positions, the report said.
In Ontario, the transition from CDOR to CORRA continued to reshape the interest rate derivatives market.
Outstanding CORRA-referenced transactions rose 259 percent between January 2024 and December 2025, from 59,416 to 213,314, while CORRA GNO grew 185 percent to $24.1tn, the OSC reported from DTCC trade repository data.
As of the fourth quarter of 2025, 86 percent of those transactions were centrally cleared, representing $20.7tn of GNO.
SOFR-referenced fixed-float swaps held the largest share of fixed-float swap GNO in Ontario at 37.2 percent, or $28.8tn, in December 2025, with CORRA-referenced swaps second at 28.1 percent, or $21.8tn.
USD-SOFR fixed-float swaps dominated interest rate risk exposure, accounting for 50.2 percent of absolute DV01 at $7.1bn, compared with CAD-CORRA's 35.3 percent at $4.96bn.
Clearing rates for interest rate derivatives remained high, with 95.7 percent of GNO centrally cleared in the fourth quarter of 2025, a level the OSC said has held between 90.0 and 96.0 percent for three years.
In September 2025, the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) published final amendments to National Instrument 94-101, which took effect on March 25, extending mandatory clearing to certain index CDS products for the first time.
Canada's credit derivatives GNO rose 36.7 percent to $1.15tn in the fourth quarter of 2025, with index CDS recording the sharpest gain at 59.5 percent, from $434bn to $693bn.
In Ontario, the CDX.NA.IG index dominated, accounting for 69.4 percent of index CDS GNO at $464bn as of December 2025, up 63.8 percent year over year from $285bn, according to DTCC and ICE trade repository data cited in the report.
Canadian equity derivatives GNO reached a record $1.7tn in the fourth quarter of 2025, up 14.8 percent, even as outstanding transaction counts fell 82.2 percent to 434,073, driven by CFD misreporting corrections.
Currency derivatives GNO declined 16.9 percent to $11tn, also reflecting CFD-related data remediation, with forwards maintaining the dominant share at 62.2 percent of GNO, the report said.
Canada's OTC commodity derivatives market appeared in GNO data for the first time in 2025 following updated OSC trade repository designation orders issued in July.
GNO ranged between $500bn and $620bn during the fourth quarter of 2025, standing at $519bn as of December 26, 2025.
Natural gas derivatives held the largest share at 43.4 percent, or $226.3bn, though metal derivatives dominated weekly turnover at 72.1 percent of GNT.
The OSC collects OTC derivatives data from public sources and directly from trade repositories under OSC Rule 91-507, using it for policy development, compliance reviews, and systemic risk monitoring.
Data from public sources is unfiltered and assumed to be free of errors, though the OSC noted that changes by trade repositories to data preparation methodologies could affect how figures are represented.
