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. 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. While firms can elect other methods to connect to EuroCCP, SWIFT is a popular option for European firms.
"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," said Diana Chan, CEO of EuroCCP. "That capability was invaluable to us in making our system operational against tight competitive deadlines."
The collaboration between DTCC and SWIFT for EuroCCP connectivity is one of many initiatives the two companies are working on to meet the industry's requirement for greater harmonisation of global trade processing.
SWIFTNet offers connectivity between all parties in the post-trade lifecycle, including EuroCCP members' settlement agents, EuroCCP's chosen settlement bank, Citi, and many European central securities depositories (CSDs).
Alain Raes, head of SWIFT EMEA, said: "We are delighted that EuroCCP has selected SWIFTNet for its connectivity. The introduction of EuroCCP over SWIFT is an important step towards streamlining and improving standardisation in the European clearing landscape. Greater standardisation will reduce cost and complexity for market participants when connecting to multiple new clearing venues."
The "EuThe "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 investment community has a lot to gain as a result of DTCC and SWIFT expanding their relationship," said Alain Raes. "We believe that the commitment between the organisations to pursue global processing efficiencies in the marketplace will continue to drive overall price reductions per transaction."