Collateral mobility
Plain definition. Collateral mobility is how freely safe debt, such as government bonds, can be traded, pledged as collateral and reused, moving to wherever it is most valuable.
Technical definition. BIS Working Paper No 561 describes the pre-crisis financial architecture as a system of mobile collateral, in which safe debt, whether government bonds or privately produced bonds (asset-backed securities), could be traded, posted as collateral and rehypothecated, moving to its highest value use. Through securitisation, bank loans were turned into bonds that could serve as collateral in repo and for derivatives positions. Immobile collateral, by contrast, consisted of bank loans that sat on bank balance sheets and were not traded. The authors add that when collateral is scarce, it can become more mobile through rehypothecation (re-use) chains.
On this site
On this site, Collateral mobility comes up in What is collateral mobility, and why did Ripple invest in ZILO and Licuido? and How big is tokenized repo and collateral movement on other platforms, and where does the XRP Ledger stand?.
Source
BIS Working Papers (bis.org), read October 1, 2026.