The International Securities Lending Association (ISLA) has been supporting the

securities lending industry by providing a standard legal framework for over 20 years.
The Global Master Securities Lending Agreement (GMSLA) may be used as a standard
master agreement for securities lending transactions in the cross-border market.

ISLA supports the following master agreements for securities lending transacted under
a title transfer arrangement.

 GMSLA 2010
 GMSLA 2000 (available for reference only to ISLA members in our Legacy
Documents area)

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1303608/000119312519185141/d724303dex99h5.htm

https://www.ird.gov.hk/eng/pdf/appsbla/gmsla2018.pdf

While the GMSLA is the standard master agreement for governing securities lending
transactions, every market participant uses its own interpretations and its own house style,
meaning identical outcomes are expressed in very different ways by different parties across the
industry. Without standards, it is impossible to capture, compare or share data.
Introducing standards that build on the Global Master Securities Lending Agreement (GMSLA)
preprint forms will improve efficiency and reduce the time spent by negotiators and lawyers in
the drafting, negotiation and execution of master trading agreements. Moreover, it provides a
business outcomes approach to securities lending relationships, as well as focusing on data
representations of such commercial terms that will transform resource optimisation, regulatory
compliance and risk mitigation.

Documentation plays a crucial part in the securities lending industry, creating a set of obligations
between the contracting parties and recording the terms of their transactions and relationship.
Accordingly, any successful digital transformation requires a focus on documentation. ISLA has therefore
mobilised a Clause Library and Taxonomy project in respect of the GMSLA documentation suite.

In May 2000, ISLA published its Global Master Securities Lending Agreement (the “2000 GMSLA”), which
effectively combined a number of the previous security-type based master agreements. This heavily
assisted with the success of straight-through processing, aligning the disparate terms across the various
master agreements into a single document.

The current securities lending legal agreement framework was fundamentally and successfully
established in 2000, with the publication of the 2000 GMSLA6. This standardised documentation
architecture was intended to allow market participants to execute multiple transactions under one
master agreement across security types, rather than negotiating lengthy agreements for each
transaction and take advantage of netting provisions which are essential to manage overall credit
exposures as the market grew. While standardising the basic terms in a preprint form, it allowed for the
addition of customisation of those terms, and any additional terms the parties might identify in a
Schedule to the preprint form.