On 19th July 2018, the newly formed ISLA CSDR working group met for the first time.
Early this year, ISLA undertook a settlement survey of its membership, that highlighted a number of settlement inefficiencies including the manual process of SSI management, manual pre-matching processes and counterparty shorts.
Chaired by James Montgomerie, Executive Director Morgan Stanley, and comprising of senior individuals nominated by the ISLA Executive Operations Board; this group was therefore developed in recognition that ISLA needs to consider settlement efficiencies, notably in readiness for CSDR.
Some of the main objectives of the group will be to provide the market with clear guidance around the application of CSDR in the securities finance market. This may include the preparation of best practice for the application and management of the regulation, as well as assistance with interpretation.
Further to that, they will be looking at identifying settlement inefficiencies in European SFT’s and seeking potential solutions, including the identification of common manual processes and potential improvements/automations as well as a review of T2S functionality and reasons why this has not been deployed more broadly.
ISLA’s 9th Post Trade Conference, which is on the 4th October this year will dedicate much of its agenda to this important topic.