SIA and Colt to Connect Monte Titoli to T2S
The partnership between Italy’s SIA and the UK’s Colt has won the tender to connect Monte Titoli, a London Stock Exchange (LSE) Group company, to TARGET2-Securities (T2S), the new centralised European platform for settlement of domestic and cross-border securities transactions.
The infrastructure of the two network service providers (NSPs) will permit the Italian central securities depository (CSD) to access the centralised European settlement platform for domestic and cross-border securities transactions
Most of the transactions generated by banks and central depositories participating in the first phase of migration to T2S, scheduled for June 2015, will be carried on SIA and Colt’s network. The two NSPs recently completed the eurosystem network acceptance test phase, reaching a milestone in the T2S programme plan, almost one month ahead of schedule
Monte Titoli, whose pool of international customers includes over 400 banks and brokers and offers services to more than 2,000 issuers, will be taking part in the first phase of migration to T2S. SIA and Colt expect most of the transactions generated by banks and CSDs taking part in the first wave of migration to T2S will be carried on their network infrastructure.
In addition, the two NSP partners will also provide a message broker solution based on the ‘Smart Integrator Advanced’ platform, which will facilitate the integration of business applications to the T2S central platform.
T2S, a project promoted by the European Central Bank (ECB) and to be managed by four central banks (Banca d’Italia, Deutsche Bundesbank, Banque de France and Banco de Espana), is one of the initiatives for the creation of the single European financial market following the euro, TARGET2, the single euro payments Area (SEPA) and the payment services directive (PSD). ECB forecasts suggest that T2S will handle a daily average of over one million securities transactions, also contributing to a significant reduction in cross-border settlement costs.
Last year, the (ECB) granted one of the two licenses as NSP for T2S to SIA and Colt, in recognition of the technology leadership of both companies in the financial services sector and their strong presence across Europe. The partners’ network architecture permits CSDs, eurozone national central banks and the main bank groups operating in Europe to connect to the new platform to settle securities transactions securely and reliably.