EUROCCP NAMES SWIFT AS CLEARING CONNECTIVITY PROVIDER

Posted August 14, 2008

NEW YORK – European Central Counterparty Ltd. has chosen SWIFT, a financial messaging provider for more than 8,300 institutions, to serve as connectivity provider for EuroCCP clearing members.

EuroCCP, the London-based, wholly owned subsidiary of The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), will provide clearing and settlement services for Turquoise, the new pan-European multilateral trading facility (MTF). Eight EuroCCP clearing participants have signed to use SWIFTNet, SWIFT's advanced IP-based messaging solution, for connectivity to EuroCCP for clearing and settlement when it begins limited use on August 15 [see August 13 News Update]. Full processing of 1,300 securities from 13 European markets will be available on September 5.

The eight Turquoise brokers wanted the ability to access EuroCCP via SWIFT in order to reap cost and efficiency benefits by reusing their existing SWIFT infrastructures to communicate with EuroCCP. “By making use of SWIFTNet, EuroCCP was able to quickly connect into the existing SWIFT community to generate secure connections, rather than having to set up all new connections,” says Diana Chan, Chief Executive Officer of EuroCCP. “That capability was invaluable to us in making our system operational against tight competitive deadlines.”

DTCC and SWIFT plan to expand their collaboration on EuroCCP connectivity into more initiatives for harmonizing global trade processing. “The investment community has a lot to gain as a result of DTCC and SWIFT expanding their relationship,” says David Pryce, Head of the Americas, SWIFT. “We believe that the commitment between the organizations to pursue global processing efficiencies in the marketplace will continue to drive overall price reductions per transaction.”

The “EuroCCP over SWIFT” offering spans SWIFT’s entire suite of messaging services, including FIN for message-by-message communications related to settlement, FileAct for file-based messaging related to clearing and Browse for GUI access to EuroCCP’s reporting databases.

“The introduction of EuroCCP over SWIFT is an important step towards streamlining and improving standardization in the European clearing landscape,” says Pryce. “Greater standardization will reduce cost and complexity for market participants when connecting to multiple new clearing venues.”