DTCC, SWIFT EXPAND ACCESS TO ALTERNATIVE PRODUCTS SERVICES

Posted July 9, 2008

NEW YORK -- The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and SWIFT plan to expand options for communicating with DTCC’s new Alternative Investment Products (AIP) suite of services.

“Building formats and messages in collaboration with SWIFT eases customer implementation of AIP, and addresses the market demand for building messaging interfaces only once,” says Ann Bergin, Managing Director, DTCC Wealth Management Services. “Feedback from our joint DTCC-SWIFT working group was very clear on this point: greater interoperability between global participant organizations and industry utilities benefits everyone who’s active in the alternative investment space.”

With the DTCC-SWIFT collaboration, market participants can now connect to the AIP service suite using ISO 20022-compliant XML messages and the SWIFT network, as well as with proprietary message formats and the previously available direct link to DTCC.

“I am delighted that organizations such as DTCC and SWIFT have come together to work towards the common good, to improve processing efficiency globally for hedge funds,” says Gary Palmer, Chief Executive Officer of the Irish Funds Industry Association, which represents hedge funds.

DTCC and SWIFT are also planning more joint initiatives to meet industry needs for harmonizing trade processing globally.