Research says 90% of banks ready for T2S

The last wave of T2S implementation is due to take place in September 2017.

 

By Paul Walsh
Nine out of ten banks declared themselves ready and confident ahead of the implementation of the Target2-Securities (T2S) initiative in a survey.

Clearstream and Accenture assessed participating banks’ readiness for the project as well as their plans to connect to the platform and which areas of their organisation will be most impacted.

Other findings revealed that participants considered the benefits of T2S to include liquidity management followed by settlement processing, collateral management and network radicalisation.

In addition, results suggest an emerging trend towards approaches to the project based on single or few points of access at infrastructure level for cash and securities as well as participants considering asset servicing as a key element of their overall T2S strategy.

“The launch of the T2S platform has been a success”, said Marc Robert-Nicoud, CEO of Clearstream Holding.

“Although the market struggled with some delays in the migration timetable, the system now operates in accordance with the schedule.”

Initially proposed in 2006 by the ECB, the T2S initiative was designed to create a harmonised European settlement platform with settlement costs proposed at a maximum of 15 cents per settlement.

Numerous industry commentators have since expressed concerns over the project.

Speaking at the GC Leaders panel at the end of June, former Schroders COO Markus Ruetimann described the initiative as a project of “compromises and excuses that has missed all its targets”.

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