SIBOS 2004

UK firm SSiSearch has secured about 80% of the Continuous-Linked Settlement (CLS) Group's 55 settlement members to contribute their reference data to SSi's Global CLS Directory. Some 110 of the 170 third-party CLS users are also on the directory, which lists authenticated reference data updated every 60 days.

In addition to reducing the incidence of failed trades, due to inaccurate reference data, the CLS Directory also helps banks ensure they are settling within CLS as much as possible by identifying fellow CLS counterparties, said Mike Convey sales director at SSiSearch in London: "The directory is the only way you can be sure you're not leaking CLS trades." Currently, about 10% of all potential CLS trades "leak out" of the system by institutions failing to realise their counterparties are using CLS, said one CLS manager in London.

UK technology vendor City Networks has enhanced its CLS module in response to the debate over the elimination of the Swift MT300 confirmation message.

While CLS, and many of its users want CLS banks to stop using the Swift message in favour of the CLS confirmation, not all banks agree with the move. "What you end up with is a very confusing situation," said Arthur Howlin, technical director at City Networks in London. "So what we've done is hide the Swift confirmations for those who don't want to see them, and show them for those who do."

City Networks has made 25–30 installations of its CLS products, CLS Matching, which manages trade exceptions, and CityNet CLS Gateway, which takes trades onto the CLS system or a third party's settlement member's system.

HSBC launched an FX trading platform, called FXTrading@HSBC in Dubai in early October, it announced at the Sibos congress.

The platform is targeted at the bank-to-bank market in the region, said Jake Smith, associate director of e-commerce at HSBC in London, who added that there is "huge interest" in e-commerce in the Middle East currently. The e-trading platform adds to HSBC's existing voice-trading business in Dubai.

Wall Street Systems (WSS), the US treasury and capital markets systems vendor, has enhanced its CLS solution.

The vendor has added the capability to settle custody transactions with fund managers and has developed interfaces with settlement members to provide a more complete straight-through processing service for third-party users of CLS.

It also announced its first corporate client for CLS, Hewlett-Packard, which has used Wall Street since 1996, and said more corporates are evaluating its systems now.

Calypso Technology won South Africa's Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) as a client for its payments system. The bank has licensed the Calypso system for cross-asset coverage and is in the process of implementing the system, Calypso said.

RMB said Calypso is the right technology platform to support its future business growth. "Calypso fits well into the RMB technical architecture. Written in Java and designed for flexibility and customisation, it gives us a solid financial framework to work from," said John Murray, technical architect at the bank.

Citigroup global transaction services is offering institutional banking clients access to real-time, multi-bank, multi-currency nostro account data through the single log-on industry-wide system developed by telecommunications firm, Cable & Wireless (C&W).

Citi's branches can now provide foreign exchange transaction details to the C&W Real-Time Nostro (RTN) system, offering Citi's clients access to their nostro accounts via the system.

The system aggregates transaction data from forex clearing banks before distributing it through a centralised network, to forex agents and account holders.

Lloyds TSB will go live on CLS in the first quarter of 2005, using Citigroup as its settlement member.

Lloyds joins Citi's 50-odd other client mandates for CLS, which are from banks, broker-dealers, corporates and fund managers in Asia, North America, Europe and Africa.

Hewlett-Packard, the US technology conglomerate, is also thought to be using Citigroup as its settlement member when it joins the settlement service in November.

The company is using Wall Street Systems' technology to connect to the global settlement service.