The collateral giver or its agent: the party posting securities to cover an exposure. The taker uses COLI for the same movements.

Is collateral given to a central bank sent as COLO?

Use CNCB for collateral delivered to or received from a national central bank for central bank credit operations. COLO is for commercial collateral arrangements.

Settlement transaction types

COLO: Collateral Out

Written and maintained by ZagTrader. Last reviewed 21 October 2026. How this page is sourced and checked

COLO marks a collateral movement seen from the collateral giver or its agent. The giver uses it when it posts collateral and when it receives collateral back.

Code: COLO

What COLO means

The collateral giver is the party that owes an exposure, for example a fund with negative OTC derivatives positions or a borrower of securities, and posts securities to cover it. Its deliveries to the taker carry COLO, and so do its receipts when collateral is returned or substituted.

The taker’s side is COLI. Collateral posted to a national central bank for credit operations uses CNCB, and a repo, where securities are sold for cash, uses REPU. The exposure can be given with :22F::COLA// in sequence E, for example OTCD for OTC derivatives or SLEB for securities lending.

When you see it

On MT542 deliveries of collateral after a margin call, and on MT540 receipts when collateral comes back.
In Singapore, where LuxCSD’s 2014 notice maps COLO to collateral out or margin out on equity instructions.

What to do next

Use COLO on every movement you make as collateral giver, in both directions. Under EU CSDR, CSDs report settlement fails per type of transaction (purchase or sale, collateral management, securities lending and borrowing, repo, other), and custodians such as BNY pass the instructed SETR code to the CSD for that reporting. A financing or collateral movement sent as TRAD lands in the wrong bucket.
In T2S markets the transaction type is not one of the matching fields, so the code on your instruction does not stop it matching. Some markets do match on it: Clearstream states that for KDPW (Poland) the SETR indicator is a mandatory matching criterion. There, agree the code with your counterparty, or both instructions stay unmatched with reason SETR (see unmatched settlement instructions).
Give the margin call or agreement reference in :20C::COLR so that the taker can reconcile the receipt against the call.

Where it appears in MT and ISO 20022

MT (ISO 15022)

MT540, MT541, MT542 and MT543: sequence E (SETDET), field 22F, :22F::SETR//COLO. The SETR qualifier is mandatory, so every instruction carries one code (format :4!c/[8c]/4!c; with a data source scheme a proprietary code may be sent instead).
Repeated in the confirmations MT544, MT545, MT546 and MT547 (sequence E, :22F::SETR//COLO) and in the MT548 status advice (sequence B, where SETR is mandatory when the sequence is present).
Optional in the statements: MT536 subsequence B1a2 and MT537 subsequences B2b and C2.

MX (ISO 20022)

sese.023: SttlmParams/SctiesTxTp/Cd = COLO (code list SecuritiesTransactionType23Code, unchanged in sese.023.001.09 to .013). SttlmParams/SctiesTxTp/Prtry carries a proprietary code instead.
Echoed in sese.024 at TxDtls/SttlmParams/SctiesTxTp/Cd and in sese.025 at SttlmParams/SctiesTxTp/Cd.

Questions

Who sends COLO?: The collateral giver or its agent: the party posting securities to cover an exposure. The taker uses COLI for the same movements.
Is collateral given to a central bank sent as COLO?: Use CNCB for collateral delivered to or received from a national central bank for central bank credit operations. COLO is for commercial collateral arrangements.