Clearstream says T2S issues were ‘external’, no delay expected

Following last week's testing issues Clearstream says there will be no delay in its T2S rollout.
By Jonathan Watkins
Delays in Clearstream’s T2S testing were down to external factors and the central securities depositary insists it will not cause an adjustment in the migration schedule.

Global Custodian reported last week that there had been issues as Clearstream continued its community testing.

In a statement, Clearstream has now said that ‘all these issues have been discussed and addressed and shall be resolved before the next test in early October’.

Clearstream is planning to go live with T2S in February 2017 as part of wave four of the initiative.

The European Central Bank which is taking part in the testing with other wave four CSDs sent Global Custodian a statement late on Friday claiming.

“During the last rehearsal of wave 4, which coincided with the start of community testing, delays occurred,” a spokesperson for the ECB said. “The delay primarily occurred due to configuration issues as wave 4 was performing their first migration rehearsal in the community test environment.”

“The lessons learnt and the experience will be used to ensure that future migration rehearsals run smoothly.”

Speaking on the Global Custodian podcast last week, Graham Ray, global head of product managements for investor services at Deutsche Bank said that being open and identifying the problems with T2S is crucial in the build up to implementation.

Community testing has had a problem,” he said. “Now people are asking where that problem occurred.”

“These windows for testing are there to iron out the problems. If we’re talking about the amount of volume which is going on to these platforms it is going to be tremendous.”

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