Smooth transition to CSDR within UniCredit GSS
As is well known, the aim of the Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR) is to increase the safety and efficiency of the securities settlement processes at settlement infrastructures, especially with respect to Central Securities Depositories (CSD’s), within the European Union.
UniCredit launched a regional project to coordinate the implementation and achieve full compliance with the CSDR regulation in the CEE markets that are part of the EU. The project team of UniCredit GSS has worked closely with compliance, legal, and regulatory experts within the Group, as well as with clients to ensure a sound understanding and smooth transition to comply with the regulation. The main goal, aside from compliance, as with all other GSS projects, has always been to minimize, as much as possible, the impact to our clients’ activities. On a continuous basis, the project team monitors and advises our clients of all changes in regulations, as well as relevant impact(s), via our dedicated Newsflashes. The approach of UniCredit GSS has always been the same: to test regulations against acceptable standards of safety of client assets and, whenever we feel that the best possible standards are not being attained, to act as our clients’ advocates and lobby locally, or regionally, for adherence to expectations..
The different levels of preparedness of markets in Central and Eastern Europe is fully dependent on the interpretation and decisions of the relevant CSDs and other market infrastructures. This has led to challenges, requiring additional efforts from UniCredit to adapt to the changing environment.
UniCredit GSS has a long tradition in terms of advocating strongly to pursue changes to the benefit of the industry and our clients. As witnessed in the past, there have been numerous initiatives which we drove to harmonize and introduce more efficient processes in the post-trading infrastructure, including settlement processes, taxation, corporate actions, proxy voting, etc. With the recent go-live of the CSDR, many market participants attribute general infrastructure readiness to UniCredit’s continued commitment, thanks to its expertise on the ground and its proximity to market infrastructures.
