The ethos of ISITC Europe has always been to promote efficiency and best practice among the Capital Markets operations community in Europe. Early successes included driving faster and more inclusive Standards development through ISO, Best Practices in Electronic Trade Confirmation, a voluntary code for Claims processing and most recently creation of the award winning MiFID Joint Working Group with likeminded industry associations FixProtocol ltd and FISD.

The working group and Executive committee structure served ISITC Europe and its Members well for over 17 years but with the onset of the Financial Markets Crisis in 2008, the ISITC Executive concluded change was not an option but a necessity.

ISITC Europe organically grew its demographic mix or participants from the original tri-party Global Custodian-Investment Manager-Vendor constituents, to include Market infrastructures, Brokers and Consultants that make up the 500-strong Member base today. Consequently, its organisation and Governance evolved along demographic lines (e.g. Broker group as well as 3 Members of each segment represented on the Executive Committee). This structure was seen to be out of step with how the community that it served was morphing in the 21st Century.

Today, ISITC Europe has made significant changes to its Governance structure by introducing a flat structure with a CEO function heading up a Leadership Group composed of Business Unit Heads of newly created functional Business Units.

During 2009 ISITC Europe have introduced three Pilot Business Units as seen above who have defined their Terms Of Reference and in most cases defined their initial priorities for analysis and resolution.

The individual Business Unit high level roles are:

Standards - responsibilities to include closer relationship with standards groups in the UK and international bodies

Regulation - aim is to be listed as a key community for input to regulaation and legal changes to the securities industry

Market Infrastructures - monitoring and commentary on changes to market practices driven by infrastructure changes such as CSD/ICSD, CCPs etc)

I.T. - a pool of resources to be used by the Business units as and when technical deployment/modeling is necessary

Collaboration - designed to identify common issues and rules of engagement with other industry associations

Education - promotion of ISITC Europe as a centre of competency for the securities industry in the UK and developing education plans for the association

Marketing - design and delivery of relevant collateral and positioning of ISITC Europe aligned to the design of the business units

Global Leadership - Positioning ISITC Europe and its membership alongside like-minded associations with the intent on a common Global strategy

CEO - leadership role drawn from the ISITC Europe membership whose role will be to be the focus point for the exec, members and third parties

As previously mentioned, the ISITC Executive committee is now replaced by the ISITC Europe Leadership Group, made up of each Business Unit Head, the CEO, Administrator and Treasurer. This lean group defines the strategy for ISITC Europe and develops the content and proposes speakers for the updates which are regularly hosted by ISITC Europe.

The next official ISITC Europe event is the Annual Conference to be hosted by ISITC Europe Member the Royal Bank Of Scotland, at their offices in Bishopsgate, on 26th November 2009. The agenda is a full day packed with three panel sessions and two key note speakers.