ABN AMRO claimed today to have signed fourth party Continuous Linked Settlement (CLS) services mandates with Indian financial institutions representing more than 50 per cent of the Clearing Corporation of India’s (CCIL) member organistions.
This announcement follows the award of the mandate for third party CLS services to ABN AMRO by CCIL. The Dutch bank says many more institutions have already indicated their interest and are expected to sign soon.
Sam Zavatti, SEVP Financial Institutions and Public Sector at ABN AMRO said: “I’m delighted that CCIL’s members have demonstrated the same confidence in ABN AMRO that CCIL itself has. As a result of these mandates ABN AMRO is now the global market leader for CLS services by number of clients and the dominant provider in Asia.”
The organisations, which include Canara Bank, Syndicate Bank, Corporation Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce and Union Bank of India are expected to go live for fourth party CLS services next month.
Joerg Pinkernell, Head of Financial Institution product development at ABN AMRO said: “These mandates prove that the fourth party model for CLS is viable. Already the CCIL concept is a huge success with CCIL rapidly becoming the aggregator of cross-currency trades for the Indian market.”
The Clearing Corporation of India Ltd. (CCIL) was set up by the Reserve Bank of India to upgrade the country’s clearing and settlement of debt instruments and forex transactions. At its behest, a Core Committee for setting up CCIL was constituted. Representatives from major banks, all-India financial institutions, industry associations such as FIMMDA (Fixed Income, Money Market and Derivatives Association), PDAI (Primary Dealers Association of India), FEDAI (Foreign Exchange Dealers Association of India), AMFI (Association of Mutual Funds in India), and the RBI were co-opted on this Committee. The country’s largest bank, State Bank of India, took the lead in piloting the discussions at the Core Committee level and finalising a blueprint for CCIL’s formation. The primary objective of setting up CCIL was to establish a safe institutional structure for the clearing and settlement of trades in the Government Securities, Forex (FX), Money and Debt Markets so as to bring in efficiency in the transaction settlement process, and insulate the financial system from shocks emanating from the operations related issues.
CCIL was incorporated on 30 April 2001, as the country’s first clearing house for the Government Securities, Forex and other related market segments. CCIL commenced operations with the clearing and settlement of trades in government securities on 15 February 2002, and in inter-bank spot and forward US Dollar-Indian Rupee (USD-INR) trades from 8 November 2002.