SWIFT Passes Milestone in Van Solution for T2S
Financial messaging provider SWIFT announced that it has achieved “a crucial milestone in delivering its Value Added Network (VAN) solution to the TARGET2-Securities (T2S) European securities settlement engine.
Following a public procurement process run by the Banca d’Italia on behalf of the central banks of the eurosystem, SWIFT was awarded a licence to provide connectivity services to T2S. Having passed a series of milestones and met the requirements of the last one, ‘milestone 6’ of the license agreement, SWIFT has successfully concluded the eurosystem network acceptance test.
SWIFT completed an extensive series of test cases to prove the solution meets the technical and non-technical requirements of T2S. SWIFT’s connectivity services agreement for T2S will be available to the market by the end of this month. SWIFT now moves to the next phases of the programme, supporting the testing activities of the European Central Bank (ECB) and direct T2S participants in preparation for the go-live of T2S planned as of June 2015.
“We are delighted to have reached this important milestone in the delivery of our connectivity solution for T2S, and I would like to thank the Banca d’Italia for its strong co-operation with us during the extensive series of tests,” said Alain Raes, chief executive (CEO), Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) & Asia Pacific, SWIFT.
SWIFT added that the VAN Solution will enable T2S participants to connect to the T2S platform for the secure exchange of business information, in ISO 20022 format, with the highest resilience, and with minimal risk and cost. Customers that have already announced they will connect to T2S using the SWIFT VAN include Clearstream, Euroclear, Iberclear, Interbolsa, KDD Central Securities Clearing Corporation, SIX Securities Services, BNP Paribas Securities Services, Citi, Deutsche Bank and Société Générale Securities Services.