Futures trading platform Eris Exchange has received regulatory approval to become a designated contract market.

The futures exchange has received approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

“The DCM designation is a major milestone for Eris Exchange on our way to becoming the premier futures market for interest rate swap futures that meets the needs of OTC market participants,” said Neal Brady, chief executive officer of Eris Exchange in a statement. “Importantly, it paves the way for end users to receive margin savings of up to 95 percent when trading Eris interest rate swap futures alongside CME Group interest rate futures.”

The application for Eris to become a DCM was filed in April, and it will become effective Nov. 7. The National Futures Association will perform regulatory services for the exchange. Eris joins other DCM’s including Nymex, Comex, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade and the IntercontinentalExchange.

Eris Exchange also announced the launch of benchmark forward starting interest rate swap futures cleared by CME Clearing and traded on its Eris SwapBook and Eris BlockBox platforms.

The exchange offers buy-side users and sales desks the trading of standard maturity, plain vanilla, spot-starting swap futures from a dedicated group of liquidity providers through a fully-anonymous central limit order book. Eris Exchange employs trading protocols familiar to the over-the-counter marketplace, with contract maturities any day out to 30 years, par swaps quoted in rate terms allowing up to a tenth of a basis point of precision and seasoned swaps quoted in net present value-based upfront payment terms.

Eris Exchange is a futures market specializing in interest rate swap futures. It launched in August 2010 solely as a call-around market, offering upstairs market without central limit order book. Since its inception, it has traded more than $34 million in nominal value. The contracts it handles are cleared by CME Clearing. It is backed by five Chicago proprietary trading firms, including Getco, DRW Holdings, Infinium Capital Management, Nico Holdings and Chicago Trading Co.