Implementation of CSDR with the settlement discipline regime will be in place from 1 Feb 2022 in the Austrian market. While several of the related measures have already been introduced earlier - the last phase to be implemented is the penalty regime.
From the go live on 1 Feb 2022, the following new facilities will be introduced:
- Daily MT537 penalty reporting around 12:00 CET on the Penalties Business Day + 1 (PBD+1) – These messages will be forwarded to clients upon receipt from the CSD.
- Monthly MT537 penalty pre-advice to be sent on the 14th business day of the following month.
- Appeal process: If a particular penalty is deemed to be incorrect by clients, they may file an appeal by email to the responsible account manager within UniCredit Bank Austria (UCBA) which includes the Penalty Reference (PREF) as well as the reason for the appeal. Appeals must be lodged with UCBA by the 9th business day of the month and, by the 10th, with the CSD. UCBA will forward client appeals to the CSD who, in turn, will conduct an assessment. If the appeal is approved by the CSD, this will be confirmed by MT537/FWAM.
- Crediting or debiting of the penalty amounts will occur on the 17th business day of the following month during the day and will be visible in the next MT950 sent overnight. The booking is done as one net amount per month per securities account. By default, the account to be used for penalty bookings will be the account linked to the respective securities account.
The first penalties will be calculated following close of business on 1 Feb 2022 and will be reported on 2 Feb 2022. In this respect old transactions (with v/d prior to the implementation date) will be kept in T2S as instructed. For this reason, UCBA recommends to its clients to monitor overdue transactions and cancel those which are no longer current, as these would otherwise be already subject to penalties.
Prior to the go live, UCBA has offered dry run testing in the production environment to its clients. For those clients that have accepted this opportunity, the setup will be kept and no further instructions are required. For all other clients that have not sent an instruction for the applicable setup on the communication BIC, UCBA will put in place a default setup in line with the standard setup for those respective clients from 1 Feb 2022. If you should have deviating preferences, please feel free to liaise with our account manager or send us an MT599 with your specifications.
Finally, please note that the buy-in regime has been postponed to a later point in time which is still to be decided.
Impact on investors: Introduction of the CSDR penalty regime for OTC transactions from 1 Feb 2022.