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What is the Eurosystem Collateral Management System?
The Eurosystem Collateral Management System (ECMS) is a unified system for managing assets used as collateral in Eurosystem credit operations. It was launched in June 2025.
Together with the other TARGET Services that the Eurosystem offers – and making use of the components it shares with those services – the ECMS ensures that cash, securities and collateral flow freely across Europe.
The ECMS is made available through the Eurosystem single market infrastructure gateway, along with the other TARGET Services.
New harmonised rules and arrangements for the mobilisation and management of collateral came into force in June 2025. For further details, take a look at the harmonised processes, procedures and arrangements involved in the mobilisation and management of collateral in Eurosystem credit operations.
Why the ECMS?
The ECMS replaces the existing systems of the national central banks of the euro area that were used to manage assets used as collateral for Eurosystem credit operations.
Replacing the previous fragmented and decentralised structure is in line with other Eurosystem initiatives aimed at developing common platforms and systems that work across the euro area to further consolidate and simplify the provision of market infrastructure services.
How does the ECMS work?
The ECMS keeps track of the individual collateral and credit positions of national central banks’ counterparties.
It does this by using data sourced from central securities depositories, triparty agents and ECB/Eurosystem databases and/or applications. The ECMS calculates the credit line available to each counterparty and sends this information to the central liquidity management tool.
Counterparties’ mobilisation instructions are converted into settlement instructions which are sent to and settled in TARGET2-Securities (T2S).
The ECMS handles corporate actions, triparty instructions and credit claim instructions in a harmonised way.
The ECMS does not affect the business and legal relationships between counterparties and national central banks – counterparties, central securities depositories and triparty agents contact their usual interlocutors at the relevant national central bank, and national central banks collect counterparties’ bids in Eurosystem credit operations.