You may be wondering, “Why do we need a clearing house if buyers and sellers can trade directly with each other?” While it’s practical to think that ditching intermediaries will reduce the money spent in a transaction, the dynamics within the stock market say otherwise. In a normal monetary trade, a seller gives a product to a buyer in exchange for cash. Then, the buyer obtains the product. The seller receives the money. They are both happy. However, in complicated transactions, there are many other factors to consider.

Most of the prominent brokers, mainly banks, operate with their own clearing house. Big name brokerages like Merrill Lynch function as both a bank and a broker, as well as its own clearinghouse. Vanguard, a well-known investment company, also operates the same way, and the online broker TD Ameritrade can clear trades with their own inhouse clearing agency.

Other brokers like Stockpile (who might that be? Hint hint it’s us), partner with a third-party clearing house. APEX Securities helps to clear our trades here at Stockpile.

1. To ensure and hasten the delivery time of products

One of the main reasons a clearinghouse exists is the facilitation of the products’ delivery time. Sometimes during a trade, the buyer’s money and the seller’s goods are not ready yet. Thus, both buyers and sellers could be trading off promises and good faith. It can take months before that promise is fulfilled. In that span of time, one party might break that promise. Either party could be on the losing end.

A clearing firm monitors the entire delivery process. A buyer will deposit an amount of money. After the down payment, the firm will immediately process the delivery. When the goods arrive, the buyer will pay in full. The supply of the product may come from several sellers. Because of this, there is a relative abundance of supply – leading to the next point.

2. To secure transactions

A clearing house guarantees that the seller will receive enough money and the buyer will have enough supply of the goods he/she needs. This is very true for perishable goods and the financial derivatives that are traded for commodities. If you look at the more sophisticated financial trading, people will buy and sell future contracts of orange juice and pork belly. The house will “clear” these trades at a fee so that suppliers of these commodities may have enough capital and investors of these contracts will have their minds at ease due to the firms’ guarantee.

3. To help sellers look for buyers

Clearing houses act as a market where buyers and sellers “meet.” However, the seller does not know where his/her product goes and the buyer does not know where his/her money goes. Individual traders face a clearing house for every deal. Depending on the size, members can number thousands of traders. Sellers will never have a scarcity of buyers, thus no worries of looking for a customer for their goods.

4. To report trading data

When the goods successfully arrive at the buyer, the clearing house reports data to both parties. It declares when a transaction is settled. The same data can be useful for the economy of nation states and the global market, especially in using research on how to make the financial strength of an economy better. Clearing market data can serve as a foundation of thought for the betterment of society.