The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has expanded its ongoing corporate actions pilot programs for ISO 20022 to cover the entire lifecycle for distribution events, from entitlements and payments through to instructions.
The pilot is part of DTCCs plan to replace proprietary corporate actions files with the latest industry-standard ISO 20022 messages. BNY Mellon, Brown Brothers Harriman, J.P. Morgan and National Financial Services are taking part in the initial pilot.
Most recently, as part of the pilot program, BNY Mellon went live with an ISO 20022 corporate actions messaging solution from DTCC.
In the first phase of the pilot, through the end of the year DTCC will send sample ISO 20022 messages to pilot participants, followed by a systematic implementation in the first part of next year.
This pilot represents phase three of our reengineering initiative and is yet another milestone in reengineering corporate actions processing in the United States, says Daniel Thieke, DTCCs managing director for Asset Services. This represents the first time DTCC is able to take inbound customer ISO 20022 messages in distribution events, further reducing risk and cost in corporate action processing and moving us closer to straight-through processing.
Also in 2013 DTCC will test inbound ISO 20022 messages with the pilot participants for Elective Dividend Services (EDS) events, a system that enables clients to view and send election instructions to DTCC for processing.
Additionally, DTCC will migrate all clients to a new browser-based user interface for distribution events next year, replacing the existing Participant Terminal System and Participant Browser Service. The new platform will unify the multiple existing systems, incorporating all event types.
We will now have all the necessary elements for corporate actions processing on one platform, making corporate actions processing easier and much more efficient, Thieke says.
As part of the ongoing corporate actions initiative, DTCC previously upgraded its user interface platform to support additional data, and along with SWIFT developed and published a suite of corporate action messages in ISO 20022 format.
For more on the ISO 20022 push, particularly the plan to utilize XBRL tagging by issuers for corporate actions events, see XBRL: Patch or panacea, Global Custodian, Winter 2010.
(CG)