International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private sector investment arm, is to begin talks about new collateral agreements with its counterparties in the debt markets – a move that market participants believe could herald a new standard for supranational issuers.

Supranationals such as the IFC are frequent users of cross-currency and interest rate swaps, and have traditionally used one-way collateral agreements, requiring their investment banks to post security against out-of-the-money swaps, but not them to do the same when the situation is reversed.