SWIFT announces the successful migration of OeKB CSD (Austria), Clearstream Banking (Germany), LuxCSD (Luxembourg), Centrálny depozitár cenných papierov SR (CDCP) (Slovakia) and KDD - Centralna klirinško depotna družba (Slovenia) and their respective communities to live operations on T2S using its Value Added Network (VAN) Solution for T2S.

The five central securities depositories (CSDs) went live on T2S on 6 February and have successfully completed their first three days of live operations on the system. They all selected the SWIFT VAN solution to connect to the new pan-European securities settlement platform, meaning that the SWIFT VAN is now carrying live traffic for more than 130 users (CSDs, Central Banks and Directly Connected Participants). With the addition of the Wave 4 transactions to the T2S platform, and with only one final wave still to come in September 2017, 90% of the expected volumes are now on the platform. This will mean that users can really start reaping the benefits of a single European platform for securities settlement: liquidity savings, reduced cross border settlement costs, deeper market harmonisation and improved collateral management.

The challenge of this migration was the sheer volume of transactions to be migrated as this was the largest wave by transaction volumes. Whilst the T2S platform has seen mainly domestic transactions settled on it to date, the number of cross-border transactions on T2S is expected to increase significantly with the migration of the Wave 4 CSDs.

Berthold Kracke, CEO of Clearstream Banking AG, said: “The successful conclusion of the fourth T2S migration wave takes Europe a crucial step forward towards a harmonised settlement landscape. By bringing an unprecedented volume of approximately 40% to the ECB’s platform, current volumes on the platform are doubled, bringing T2S very close to the finishing line. Throughout the whole duration of this mammoth project, along with all other parties involved, SWIFT has proven to be a reliable and strong partner in helping us materialise these harmonisation efforts. Our clients are now able to consolidate all eligible assets at our Central Securities Depository Clearstream.”

Georg Zinner, member of OeKB CSD GmbH's management board said: “T2S is an important step towards the creation of a true single market for financial services in the European Union (EU). OeKB CSD uses T2S fully and for all categories of securities kept in custody. By using T2S, we will now be able to achieve even more favourable prices. We are delighted to have worked with the SWIFT team on this project and look forward to many more years of fruitful collaboration between our two companies.”  

Patrick Georg, CEO of LuxCSD S.A., said: “This important strategic project has been conducted in close partnership with the European Central Bank, National Central Banks, SWIFT and other participating CSDs over many years. It forms an important pillar in the vision of a Capital Markets Union and contributes to the integration of the European financial market infrastructure by further improving the stability and integrity of the European market.”

Boris Tomaž Šnuderl, President and CEO, KDD - Central Securities Clearing Corporation, Slovenia, said: "For KDD and the Slovenian market, the T2S project was an important facilitator of harmonization of our capital market, especially in corporate actions processing, and an enabler of integration to the European capital market. For KDD, as a small European CSD, it was a real challenge to prepare and implement the organizational, technical and legal changes that were needed to meet the integration requirements. With committed employees and competent partnering institutions both in the Slovenian market and at a European level, we’re very pleased to have achieved our goal and have now joined the T2S community in the 4th migration wave. We’ve been collaborating with SWIFT for a very long time and with its expertise, it was a natural choice for a partner on this project, not only as a VAN provider, but also as a competent partner on standards and T2S functioning.”

“Martin Wiedermann, CEO and Chairman of the Board of CDCP, said: “For CDCP – Slovakian CSD, T2S represents an important milestone in the life of the company. With this migration and the move to communication in ISO 20022 format, we have made a quality leap that we believe will significantly benefit our business and our customers going forward. Along with CDCP, the entire Slovakian capital market will become an integrated part of the European capital market with harmonised matching processes and securities settlement. We believe that further harmonisation in other areas will also be fostered by T2S. For the T2S project, CDCP expanded its established cooperation with SWIFT in order to support the settlement of cash-leg in euro. We are convinced that this cooperation will continue with the smooth provision of VAN services for T2S operations.

Alain Raes, Chief Executive, EMEA and Asia Pacific, SWIFT said: "With four migration waves now completed, SWIFT is delighted to have contributed to the successful migration onto T2S of most of the European volumes. The Wave 4 migration went extremely smoothly and the point of no return was reached well ahead of schedule. With three days of live operations now behind us, we are very pleased to see that volumes are ramping up and all of our VAN customers are happy with the support that they have received and continue to receive from SWIFT. This major undertaking is once again proof of SWIFT’s capability to efficiently support and facilitate large community projects. 

T2S is a very important milestone in the transformation of the European securities market and a major building block in the Capital Markets Union (CMU). We are proud to be a part of such momentous change. We will keep on supporting the community in its ongoing transformation. Going forward, we expect to see new business models arise as the market continues to develop, integrate new regulations and realises the true benefits of T2S.”