The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) announced that its Exception Manager platform has passed an important milestone, managing more than 2 million records related to 849,556 transactions/trades/exceptions and representing over $100 billion in market activity, with five Global Custodians and 85 firms signed to adopt the service.
Matthew Stauffer, a managing director and head of Institutional Trade Processing at DTCC, said in a statement: “Exception Manager provides a secure integrated and efficient platform between parties that lowers operational risk associated with today’s manual and cumbersome processes, and it’s a critical element for achieving a ‘no-touch’ processing environment.”
The service was launched in 2018 to provide a central industry platform to publish, manage, and communicate exceptions throughout the trade settlement lifecycle process. It was created for all parties involved in the trade lifecycle, including buy-side firms, outsourcers, broker/dealers, custodians, prime brokers, clearing brokers and other settlement agents.
The platform supports all securities transactions globally, capturing exception details from participating custodians, broker dealers and CSDs, and standardizing exception processing to enable faster issue resolution. It centralizes and standardizes exception processing to enable faster resolution, delivers a significant reduction in the number of exceptions and supports exceptions in trade validation and settlement processing. Effective collaboration and communication enable the reduction of risk and cost in the user’s settlement process while lowering the potential for failed trades.
Automated exception management processes will become increasingly important when new regulations such as the Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR) – which aims to increase the safety and efficiency of securities settlement and the settlement infrastructures in the EU – takes effect. CSDR’s Settlement Discipline Regime (SDR) will require investment firms to put in place measures to mitigate settlement fails. Under the SDR, market participants will be liable to pay daily penalties or charges against each transaction that fails to settle, along with corresponding mandatory buy-ins for failing transactions after the prescribed number of days.