Near completion

Wed, 08/06/2016

UniCredit Bank Austria is getting ready for Austria’s joining the T2S universe early next year. By Günter Schnaitt, Head of GSS Austria
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
According to the decision of the ECB governing council in March, the date for the T2S migration for Austria will be 6 February 2017.

To be kept up to date with the changes in T2S and efforts of the operational business, UniCredit Bank Austria became a member of the T2S Advisory Group, the NUG (National User Group) under the leadership of the Austrian National Bank, the OeKB CSD GmbH, the TUG (technical user group) under the leadership of Austrian National Bank and CANIG (corporate action national implementation group).

The status of UniCredit Bank Austria

In January 2016, the testing phase with the Austrian CSD (OeKB CSD) started to implement all the new T2S-features:

  • Hold / release mechanism
  • Night-time settlement
  • New matching criteria (additional and optional)
  • New matching tolerance
  • Automated prioritisation logic
  • New instruction types (delivery with payment, receipt with payment, payment free of delivery)

The analysis phase focused on streamlining the internal processing to an external settlement procedure to ensure an increase of the STP rate for the clients of UniCredit Bank Austria. Therefore, the STP requirements that were sent out in April 2015 are still valid for all instructions and were sent to avoid any misunderstandings with our clients.

The system was also adjusted to accept MT530 ensuring an automated amendment of the hold / release status and prioritisation.

Ongoing analysis is still necessary for transaction management (claims, transformation and buyer protection) for the on-exchange business related to T2S. Business specifications on both topics were received on February 2016 from the CSD and CCPA.

Claims management in Austria will not be fully aligned with T2S standards as these require an independent settlement for claims and original transactions. UniCredit Bank Austria aims to automate “release” claims for rights; however, the structure of our CSD omnibus account might lead to short positioning of our client holdings with an automated release. Therefore, any release from an omnibus account should only be executed upon instruction.

Official end-to-end testing from clients via agent, national CSD and T2S depends on the final decision of the migration wave plan (probably from July 2016). Regardless of the migration plan, clients of UniCredit Bank Austria will be offered the opportunity to test on a bilateral basis upon request.