Bill Direct Trades

What is a Bill Direct trade?

Bill Direct trades are trades that are billed directly to and paid for by the Customer or Trader party as dictated by the Docs Agreement.  These trades are eligible to settle in Atlantis only if the Customer or Trader party is live and settles on Atlantis.

How to identify Bill Direct trades in Atlantis

If the Customer or Trader on the agreement is not set up for Atlantis settlement, then the Atlantis trades that are Bill Direct will have a Cannot Settle Reason of “Payer Participant Missing”. The Payer Participant field will be blank, and these trades will not be settlement eligible. 

How to identify Bill Direct Docs Agreements and rates lines

Docs Agreements that are Bill Direct are identified by checking the Bill to Party under the Rate Schedule workstream.  Any agreement with a Bill to Party of either Customer or Trader is a Bill Direct Docs Agreement and will cause any matched trades in Atlantis to reflect as such.

Firms can also specify that a specific exchange on an agreement rate schedule is Bill Direct by setting “Direct Bill” to “Y” for each rate line on that exchange. (Please note that Docs will require that either all or no rate lines on an exchange are Direct Bill “Y”.) This will cause only trades that match to rate lines on that specific exchange to appear as Bill Direct in Atlantis, while other trades matched to the same agreement will appear as eligible to settle in Atlantis. 

How to settle Bill Direct trades

If the Customer or Trader Party is not set up to settle trades on Atlantis, the trades will need to be settled off-platform. The Receiver on the trades will need to manually invoice the Customer or Trader Party listed on the Agreement.

How to designate trades as Bill Direct

If a Participant believes that a given trade should be Bill Direct, they have two options for remediation.

Option 1 – Manually map trades using Adjusted Agreement ID

In the case that a Bill Direct Docs Agreement exists between the Clearing Broker and the Executing Broker, but the trades are currently either not matched to the Agreement or matched to an Agreement that is Bill to Clearing Broker, then the Receiver Participant can manually match the trades to the Bill Direct Docs Agreement using the Adjusted Agreement ID field. The trades will then match to the new agreement and recalculate. If the Customer or Trader Party is not set up to settle trades in Atlantis, the trades will reflect a blank “Payer Participant Code” and a Cannot Settle Reason of “Payer Participant Missing”.

Option 2 – Initiate new Bill Direct Docs Agreement

If there is no Bill Direct Docs Agreement in place, then the Participants will need to initiate a new agreement in Docs. They will need to designate the Bill to Party as either Customer or Trader and ensure that the new agreement's effective dates cover the trade date for the new agreement to match and price*. The trades will then match to newly created agreement. If the Customer or Trader Party is not set up to settle trades in Atlantis, the trades will reflect a blank “Payer Participant Code” and a Cannot Settle Reason of “Payer Participant Missing”.

*If firms are unable to backdate agreement due to internal rules, they will need to follow Option 1 once agreement is set up.