The Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems (CPSS) and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) have today published three documents that promote global efforts to strengthen financial market infrastructures (FMIs). New and more demanding international standards for payment, clearing and settlement systems, including central counterparties, have today been issued by the CPSS and IOSCO in a report titled Principles for financial market infrastructures. Among other things, the principles will provide important support for the G20 strategy to make the financial system more resilient by making central clearing of standardised OTC derivatives mandatory.The new standards replace the three existing sets of international standards set out in the Core principles for systemically important payment systems (CPSS, 2001); the Recommendations for securities settlement systems (CPSS-IOSCO, 2001); and the Recommendations for central counterparties (CPSS-IOSCO, 2004). CPSS and IOSCO have strengthened and harmonised these three sets of standards by raising minimum requirements, providing more detailed guidance and broadening the scope of the standards to cover new risk-management areas and new types of FMIs. At the same time as publishing the finalised principles, CPSS-IOSCO have released two related documents for public consultation. One is an assessment methodology that can be used to assess whether an FMI is observing the new principles. The other is a disclosure framework that sets out the information an FMI should publish in order to be transparent about the risks of using the FMI.