There was surprise among custodian bankers in Vienna today at the news that Austrian central securities depository – Osterreichische Kontrollbank AG (OeKB)- had postponed the launch date of its new real-time settlement system (DS-Advanced).
The postponement will have a knock-on effect on on the implementation of the second Austrian CCP cycle. It was scheduled to start two weeks after DS-Advanced was judged to be operating in a stable fashion.
The reason, says OeKB, is “issues” that arose during the testing of the SWIFT messaging capabilities. There were concerns at OeKB that a premature launch would lead to a deterioration in settlement performance. A new launch date of 23 January 2006 has been set.
“The benefits of a real-time gross settlement system and a second stock exchange clearing cycle will be delayed,” says Gunter Schnaitt, head of operations at Bank Austria Creditanstalt (BA-CA) in Vienna. “Although we are not particularly happy about the OeKB decision, we support it as being in the best interests of the market. We have expressed our view and that of our clients to the OeKB management that further delays are unacceptable and adhering to the new implementation date is imperative.”