Options Clearing Corporation

The Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) is a United States clearing house founded in 1973 and based in Chicago, Illinois, specializing in equity derivatives clearing and providing central counterparty clearing and settlement services to 16 exchanges. It functions as a guarantor between clearing parties, ensuring that contract obligations are fulfilled, and it handles options, financial and commodity futures, security futures and securities lending transactions; it maintains approximately 100 billion US dollars in collateral from its clearing members and processes billions of dollars in transactions daily.