Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary L. Schapiro indicated at a congressional hearing Wednesday that approval for CME Group Inc.'s (CME) clearing platform for credit-default swaps is imminent. The CME is the lone company still waiting for SEC approval.

"We resolved all issues in the CME application," she said in response to a question from Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, R-Ill.

Last week, the SEC signed off on a long-awaited proposal from IntercontinentalExchange Inc. (ICE) to clear credit-default swaps. That plan, which was launched this week, is the first clearinghouse available for credit-default swaps in the U.S. It will be overseen by the Federal Reserve because it is structured as a limited purpose bank, but the SEC first had to exempt it from various securities laws.

But the SEC's approval of ICE prompted some angry words last week from Bart Chilton, a commissioner from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, who said he was disappointed that the SEC had given ICE a competitive advantage over CME. CME's clearing plan would be regulated by the CFTC and already got the green light from the Fed and CFTC late last year.

Most recently, the SEC said it had delayed approving CME's clearing plan because of unresolved issues surrounding customer margin.

-By Sarah N. Lynch, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-6634; sarah.lynch@dowjones.com