CLS Group

CLS Group

CLS Bank is headquartered at One Financial Square (center) in Lower Manhattan
Industry	Financial services
Founded	July 1997
Headquarters	Lucerne (holding), New York (bank)
Area served	18 currency jurisdictions
Website	www.cls-group.com

CLS Group (for Continuous Linked Settlement), or simply CLS, is a specialized financial market infrastructure group whose main entity is the New York-based CLS Bank. It started operations in 2002 and operates a unique and global central multicurrency cash settlement system, known as the CLS System, which plays a critical role in the foreign exchange market (also known as forex or FX). Although the forex market is decentralised and has no central exchange or clearing facility, firms that chose to use CLS to settle their FX transactions can mitigate the settlement risk associated with their trades.^[1] CLS achieve this thanks to a central net (bilateral and multilateral clearing) and gross payment versus payment settlement service directly connected to the real-time gross settlement systems of participating jurisdictions through accounts at each of their respective central banks.

CLS demonstrated its risk-mitigation value in the financial crisis of 2007–2008, during which the forex market remained orderly even in times of severe systemic financial stress,^[2] and again during market turmoil associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.^[3] The CLS System's sophisticated payment versus payment concept does not entirely eliminate forex settlement risk, but reduces it considerably among the currencies that it encompasses.^[4]