DTCC, the post-trade market infrastructure, has initiated a pilot scheme designed to further automate the corporate actions (CA) process, in an attempt to address asset services challenges around the sourcing of corporate actions announcements.
The pilot, which includes two phases, aims to simplify interactions across the agent and issuer community by standardising and automating the sourcing of corporate actions announcements, eliminating manual processes, providing cost savings, reducing processing lead time and mitigating risks.
DTCC managing director, general manager, asset services, Ann Marie Bria, said: “As the global financial industry becomes increasingly more complex, we see tremendous opportunity for increased automation and modernization within the corporate actions space. We are pleased to deliver this pilot, in direct response to client and industry feedback, to bring long-needed automation and standardisation to the critical event notification process – increasing efficiency and accuracy.”
“Ultimately, our goal is to revamp the end-to-end corporate actions event structure to more efficiently capture source data and provide a more reliable, sustainable, and secure foundation for the future processing landscape,” Bria added.
Phase 1 of the pilot, which was completed in December 2023, tested new inbound automated messaging for issuers and agents. As part of the test, DTCC provided messaging capabilities modelled on the ISO 20022 standard that enabled an agent to submit an automated announcement to DTCC. DTCC was then able to automate the processing of that announcement through its system and generate an ISO 20022 corporate actions announcement to its client in a test environment. The messaging solution removes current manual processes and caters to agents with large event volumes or those looking to send events with large numbers of assets or event notifications.
DTCC plans to launch Phase 2 of the pilot with a scheduled test release in Q3 2024. In this phase, firms will test a modernised corporate actions GUI portal. The new portal will provide an easy-to-use interface for redemption event types, such as partial/full calls and maturities, which agents and issuers can use to transmit accurate and complete announcement event information. The aim is to provide agents and issuers with the ability to transmit standardised event information via a modernised interface, increasing accuracy, removing manual validation processes, and eliminating delays to the industry.
©Markets Media Europe 2024
