T2S doubles settlement volumes with wave 4 migration

March 2017

T2S, the pan-European platform for securities settlement, aims to integrate Europe’s post-trade environment, thus fostering competition and optimising collateral and liquidity management. Its full potential is unleashed as more and more markets connect to the platform and economies of scale are achieved.

22 central securities depositories (CSDs) from 20 European markets will have migrated their securities settlement business to T2S by September 2017. The CSDs migrate to the platform in waves so that the increase in the number of users and settlement volumes is gradual, and to minimise any migration-related risks.

The largest migration wave in terms of both number of CSDs and settlement volumes took place at the beginning of February 2017. It was also among the most challenging, due to the high volume of positions and instructions to migrate.

The migration of wave 4 took place over the weekend of 3 to 5 February. Despite there being only short time buffers between the planned activities, the migration weekend passed smoothly and the “point on no return”, meaning successful completion of the activities, was reached in the evening of 4 February.

6 February 2017 was the first operational day for OeKB CSD (Austria), Clearstream (Germany), KELER (Hungary), LuxCSD (Luxembourg), CDCP (Slovakia) and KDD (Slovenia). Following their successful migration, the volume of securities transactions now being settled in T2S has almost doubled. On average, 479,240 securities transactions per day were processed in February 2017 compared with 234,296 in January.

Chart 1: Average number of securities transactions settled in T2S per day

T2S is now processing about 90% of the total number of securities transactions expected by the time all participating CSDs connect to the platform.

Chart 2: T2S migration waves and expected volumes in full migration

The coming months will see the completion of the first rollout phase of T2S, with the final migration wave to the platform set for 18 September 2017. But this is not the end of the journey. The Danish krone is set to join T2S by the end of 2018, turning it into a multi-currency securities settlement platform. Further currencies and markets may also join in future rollout phases. As T2S unrolls we come closer and closer to achieving our goal of a genuinely integrated capital market in Europe.