Portfolio Margin: Overview, How it Works

What Is Portfolio Margin?

Portfolio margin refers to the modern composite-margin policy that must be maintained in a derivatives account containing swaps (including credit default swaps), options, and futures contracts. The objective of portfolio margining is to offset the risks to the lender through consolidating, or netting positions to account for a portfolio’s overall risk. It typically results in drastically lower margin requirements for hedged positions compared to traditional policy rules. Portfolio margin accounting requires a margin position that is equal to the remaining liability that exists after all offsetting positions have been netted against each other.

For example, if a position in the portfolio is netting a positive return, it could offset the liability of a losing position in the same portfolio. This would reduce the overall margin requirement that is necessary for holding a losing derivatives position.

Understanding Portfolio Margin

Margin is the collateral that an investor has to deposit with their broker or exchange to cover the credit risk the holder poses when they borrow cash from the broker to buy financial instruments, borrow financial instruments to sell them short, or enter into a derivatives contract.

Portfolio margin requirements have only been recently instituted in the options market, although futures traders have enjoyed this system since 1988. The Cboe Global Markets (Cboe) imposes rules on margin accounts. In 2007, it introduced expanded margining requirements to more closely align portfolio margin amounts with the riskiness of a customer’s entire portfolio.

Portfolio risk is to be measured by simulating the impact of market volatility. This revised system of derivative margin accounting has freed up capital for options investors, allowing them more leverage, which previously was required for margin deposits under the old strategy-based margin requirements that were instituted in the 1970s.

Special Considerations

Margin accounts are also subject to regulatory requirements laid out by the Federal Reserve Bank’s (Fed) Regulation T, a package of rules that govern customer accounts.

Additionally, the New York Stock Exchange’s Rule 431, Nasdaq’s Rule Option 6C, and the brokerage industry’s self-regulatory agency, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's (FINRA) Rules 2360 and 4210, govern how brokers manage margin accounts.

Among FINRA's requirements, broker-dealers who offer portfolio margin accounts must meet “specific criteria and standards to be used in evaluating the suitability of a customer for writing uncovered short option transactions,” and establish and monitor “a minimum equity requirement.”

Broker-dealers must also monitor, report, and increase margin requirements on accounts with high concentrations of individual securities. Additionally, broker-dealers must provide customers with and receive their acknowledgment of, FINRA-approved written statements describing the risks involved in the accounts. Broker-dealers are also required by Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Exchange Act rules to segregate customer account assets from the institutions.