Introduction
Euronext Securities Porto is pleased to inform its clients of the forthcoming implementation of the Eurosystem Collateral Management System (ECMS) and the associated SCoRE standards, in addition to a new Corporate Actions platform.
This implementation will meet clients’ needs for increased compliance with standards and improved efficiency of Corporate Actions processing, modernisation of systems to provide greater flexibility, streamlined delivery and faster time to market, and harmonisation of services for clients across markets.
What is ECMS?
The Eurosystem Collateral Management System (ECMS) is a unified system for managing assets used as collateral in Eurosystem credit operations. Its launch is planned by Eurosystem for April 2024, according to the new plan announced by ECB.
Financial intermediaries connected to the Eurosystems (e.g., T2S) will be required to connect to ECMS, which will comply with the SCoRE standards.
What is SCoRE?
As part of its mandate to foster European financial markets integration and promote a truly domestic single market in Europe, the Eurosystem’s Advisory Group on Market Infrastructures for Securities and Collateral (AMI-SeCo) worked towards developing a Single Collateral Management Rulebook for Europe (SCoRE).
SCoRE is a set of standards, which defines common rules for managing collateral. The implementation of these standards aims to reduce fragmentation in the European markets, which arises due to the variety of legacy standards, structural constraints and as a result of complex and diverse market practices.
While the AMI-SeCo identified ten areas where harmonisation is needed, the first set of published standards focus on three topics:
- Triparty Collateral Management
- Corporate Actions
- Billing processes
Currently only Corporate Actions and Billing standards are applicable to Euronext Securities Porto.
Corporate Actions
The latest version of the SCoRE Corporate Actions Standards can be found on the ECB website. The adaptation plan for SCoRE standards give details of the expected impacts on Corporate Actions compliance and can be found here.
According to the analysis of the standards, their impacts and the best method of implementation, Euronext Securities Porto foresees many changes that will result from their adoption. A non-exhaustive list of the expected changes has been drawn up for Fixed Income securities and is provided in the table below.
- Implementation of additional Corporate Action event types and events with options.
- Alignment of the cash and securities payments.
- Implementation of reversals.
- Notification in case of delays in execution of a Corporate Action.
- Ensure availability of the default option for the new CA events with options.
- Expansion the use of blocking of securities for the new elective CA events.
- Availability of the full set of the ISO 20022 Corporate Actions messages for clients, complying with standards.
- Enhancement of business processes, workflows and key data with the implementation of ISO 20022 messages.
- Alignment with the standard for securities that follow the “Modified Following business day” convention.
New Corporate Actions platform
Euronext Securities Porto will take advantage of the implementation of ECMS and the SCoRE standards to implement a new Corporate Actions platform. This will increase the efficiency and modernise the processing of Corporate Actions, while complying with the new SCoRE standards.
The new Corporate Actions platform will be implemented first for the Fixed Income securities. The schedule for this implementation is expected for production go-live in November 2023.
Management of Corporate Actions for all other asset classes will migrate to this new platform after the go-live of the ECMS in Production. A dedicated implementation plan and milestones for these asset classes will be communicated in due course.
Following the migration of Fixed Income securities to the new Corporate Actions platform, the existing platforms will run in parallel to continue providing services for all other asset classes.
Billing
The AMI-SeCo validated the content of the SCoRE Billing Standards in June 2021. The final version of the standards can be found on the ECB website.
Euronext Securities Porto expects to comply with the standards for the ECMS deadline.
The adaptation plan for the SCoRE standards includes the expected impacts for Billing compliance and can be found here.
Impacts of compliance with the SCoRE billing standards is expected to have minute impact for clients. The details of the ISO 20022 messages and any other applicable changes will be communicated, if applicable, in due course.
Impact on clients and further information
Euronext Securities Porto performed its impact analysis and project definition to ensure the best possible solution for its clients.
The Corporate Action processing in the new Corporate Actions Platform , as the main changes for clients are described in the Process Handbook.
The ISO messages structures can be found in MyStandards.
Clients testing strategy and activities can be found in the Testing Guide.
Key milestones
This project aims to meet the main milestones listed in the table below, which align with the high-level timetable for the implementation of the ECMS platform.
More details on the timetable will be provided in future communications.
| Publication of the last version of the adaptation plan for Corporate Actions | October 2022 |
| Publication of the last version of the adaptation plan for Billing | October 2022 |
| Communication of detailed functional & technical changes | July 2022 |
| Completion of internal changes | Q4 2022 |
| Client / user testing | May – October 2023 |
| Rehearsals with the ECMS | Q2 – Q3 2023 |
| Go-live | April 2024 |