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On June 16th, 2025, the Eurosystem Collateral Management System (ECMS) officially went live. A major milestone for the European financial infrastructure and a personal achievement for me as well. Having been involved in this transformative project from its early stages from the Vendor side I’d like to take a moment to reflect on this journey and its significance for the Eurosystem.
The ECMS Vision
The ECMS is the 3rd project of the program Vision 2020 launched by the Eurosystem after TIPS in 2018 and T2 in 2023. The goal of Vision 2020 was to create a harmonized, efficient, and resilient financial market infrastructure in Europe.
Thus, the aim for launching ECMS was clear: build a single, harmonised Pool based collateral management system for the entire Eurosystem and replace the fragmented national systems with a unified platform, supporting cross-border collateral mobility.
Initially meant to replace 19 different local Collateral Management systems, with the go live of the 16th of June 2025, it’s actually 20 local NCB systems that have been replaced after Croatia became the 20th Member of the ESM on 22 March 2023. Another National Central Bank should also join the ECMS next year as the Bulgarian National Bank will join euro area on 1 January 2026.
Key Features of ECMS
Besides to the Integration within the Eurosystem’s market infrastructure landscape, ECMS brings a host of innovations and benefits to the Eurosystem axed around the harmonisation of collateral management practices, the efficiency gained from operating one single system and the connectivity via ESMIG (Eurosystem Single Market Infrastructure Gateway).
The ECMS includes several features :
Impact on the Eurosystem and other financial institutions
The go-live of ECMS represents more than just a technical milestone, it marks a strategic advancement for the European Central Bank and the national central banks of the Eurosystem. By harmonizing and centralizing collateral management across 20 countries, ECMS enhances financial stability, improves the efficiency and transparency of collateral operations, and strengthens the implementation of monetary policy. It also provides market participants with greater operational predictability and efficiency.
Beyond the Eurosystem and the National Central Banks, the launch of ECMS has had a significant impact on major European financial institutions such as Euroclear and Clearstream.
-Clearstream announced the successful integration of its Triparty Collateral Management Solution with ECMS, ensuring seamless connectivity and support for harmonized collateral processes.
-Euroclear, for its part, confirmed a successful connection to ECMS, facilitating the mobilisation of over €550 billion in assets. Euroclear also marked the simultaneous launch of its new Central Bank Access Service, part of its Collateral Highway offering, which enables clients to fully outsource end-to-end bilateral settlement management with their national central banks.
A Look Back before ECMS
My journey in collateral management with central banks in the Eurozone began well before the ECMS project. I had the opportunity to contribute to two major initiatives with two different national central banks.
It all started with the 3G (Gestion Globale des Garanties) project for Banque de France, which went live in 2008. At the time, 3G was a pioneering system, introducing the pool-based collateral model, a concept that was innovative and forward-thinking for its time compared by the Repo based model.
A few years later, I took on the role of support team lead for the Central Bank of Ireland, following the successful go-live in 2014. This system also adopted a pool-based model, similar to what had been delivered earlier for Banque de France. Through my involvement in these two projects with the same solution, I witnessed with the ECMS project the advantages of having a shared and unified system with segregated data across national central banks. Compared to deploying and maintaining multiple systems with duplicated referential data (eligible assets, prices ...), the shared approach significantly reduces complexity and operational overhead.
I became involved in the ECMS project from its early stages responding to RFPs, participating in the proof of concept hosted by Banco de España, and later, from 2023 until go-live, serving as a collateral expert and overseeing early-stage system maintenance.
Being part of ECMS feels like reaching a new level that began with 3G in 2008. Fortunate to be witness and be part of two generations of such critical infrastructure especially with the same solution and the same provider since their embryonic state. I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity. ECMS is far more than just a technical system, it's the result of thousands of hours of cross-border collaboration, involving diverse institutions, teams, and visions.
I look forward to seeing how ECMS evolves and supports the future of central banking in Europe.
Looking Ahead: Implications for CBDC and the Digital Euro
Looking ahead, it is reasonable to expect that the go-live of this unified collateral management system will also help foster innovation in the area of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), particularly the digital euro. The infrastructure and harmonization provided by ECMS could serve as a foundation for more integrated and efficient settlement mechanisms in a digital currency environment.
This expectation aligns with the ECB’s ongoing efforts: in 2023, the ECB announced an investment of over €1 billion with technology vendors to develop core components and services for a potential digital euro. More recently, the ECB revealed the launch of a digital euro innovation platform, bringing together around 70 market participants, including merchants, fintech companies, start-ups, banks, and other payment service providers, to collaborate on exploring payment functionalities and real-world use cases for the digital euro.
This content is provided by an external author without editing by Finextra. It expresses the views and opinions of the author.
Carlo R.W. De Meijer The Meyer Financial Services Advisory (MIFS) at MIFSA
01 October
Naina Rajgopalan Content Head at Freo
30 September
Alex Malyshev CEO, Co-founder at SDK.finance, FinTech software provider
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