Bank of Italy research finds euro-area repo volumes are evenly split across cleared and bilateral markets with primary dealers central to bilateral intermediation

The Bank of Italy has published a research paper on the euro-area repo market using granular data reported under the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation to map market structure and participant roles. The paper finds that outstanding volumes are almost evenly split between centrally cleared and non-centrally cleared segments, but that the less-explored bilateral market has a stable core-periphery structure in which primary dealers sit at the core and redistribute liquidity and collateral between cash-rich institutions and those seeking funding. Using daily stock data from January 2023 to December 2025, the study shows that the centrally cleared segment is mainly an interbank market concentrated in one-day maturities, while the bilateral segment involves a wider mix of banks and non-bank financial institutions and is skewed toward longer tenors. Primary dealers accounted for around half of bilateral outstanding volumes and close to 80% of centrally cleared volumes in 2025. In a 17 December 2025 network snapshot of the bilateral market, the paper identifies 22 core nodes out of 855 participants, with this core-periphery structure remaining broadly stable over time, indicating that primary dealers’ intermediation role is a persistent feature of euro-area repo market functioning.