The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. announced this week that its Fixed Income Clearing Corp. subsidiary will begin functioning as a new central counterparty, or CCP, designed to reduce risk and costs in the $100-trillion-a-year market for U.S. MBS, starting in April, following the Securities and Exchange Commission’s approval of the proposal. Company officials say the CCP will guarantee settlement of all matched MBS trades, which industry representatives see as a crucial step for the securities industry where the settlement of an MBS trade often does not take place until months after the trade itself was made...