Clearstream Banking Frankfurt Testing Environment (CASCADE)

Clearstream Banking¹ highlights its testing facilities and services that are available

immediately.

Introduction

Clearstream Banking offers customers a permanent test environment for the CASCADE platform. The test environment is a copy of the production environment and therefore all major processes work as in production. It can be used to test and simulate specific account setups, changed reporting or any other projects customers want to simulate.

In addition to the permanent test environment, there is a Release test environment that replaces the permanent test environment before CBF Main Releases (normally between 2-6 weeks before the Release). During these Release test windows, customers can test, in advance, the changes that are applied in the CBF Main Release.

Requirements

To use the CASCADE testing facilities customers need to request an account setup including reporting within the testing environment. Account numbers within the CASCADE test environment are identical with the ones used within the CASCADE production environment. For the setup, it is mandatory that the account already exists within the CASCADE production environment or has already been reserved in production.

Available functional services

The CASCADE test facility (IMS23) enables customers to support the entire process chain of trading, clearing and settlement including the applicable reporting from Clearstream Banking. According to this process chain it is possible to test all kinds of OTC settlements and trades on trading venues that are processed against the central counterparty (CCP) and the respective reporting (message exchange via SWIFT, File Transfer and MQSeries).

The full range of supported reporting messages (inbound/outbound) is available in the CASCADE Testing and Simulation Guide.

The CASCADE testing facility of Clearstream Banking is open four days a week from 08:00 to 17:00 (and the Testing team is available from 09:00 to 16:00) and supports the complex testing in the post-trading environment. For details on the opening days, please refer to the Clearstream website.

Testing types

Unguided testing

Customers can use the test environment without the support of the Clearstream Testing team. If a customer has at least two CBF main accounts, the customer can simulate both parties by inputting the relevant instructions on these accounts. In addition, customers have the possibility to test with other Clearstream Banking customers bilaterally. As it is necessary to have according holdings of ISINs for testing within the CASCADE test environment, the creation of up-to ten holdings (ISINs) per month will be regarded as unguided testing and done by Clearstream Banking.

Guided testing

Within guided testing Clearstream Banking supports customers with their testing requests and acts as a potential counterparty.

Additional services available with the guided testing are:

• Problem analysis of failed test cases;
• Input of counterparty instructions (matching instructions or delivery instructions) by Clearstream Banking;
• Creation of balances for especially required ISINs upon request (beside restrictions due to registered shares);
• Special status reporting about instructions, that is, lack of securities and blocked by counterparty;
• Deposit of certificates so that customers can test mark ups and mark downs. If customers deposit the certificates, Clearstream Banking will simulate the vaults booking so that customers are able to do the “mark up/mark down” testing;
• Setup of a limited range of income events or corporate actions events upon special request for testing the MT564 and MT566 flows;
• Input of OTC trades, so that an MT564/566 for open trades will be produced once an event is set up. The MT564/MT566 for stock exchange trades (LION) can only be produced if customers input trades in the Xetra test environment.

For a guided testing, customers have to agree to a testing window with the contact below.

Contact

The Testing team is available on regular German business days from 09:00 to 16:00.

Fees

Testing for Clearstream Banking´s Releases and unguided testing is free or charge. Fees for guided testing are available in the Domestic Fee Schedule.

Further information

For more specific details of the test environment please refer to the CASCADE Testing and Simulation Guide.

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1. This Announcement is published by Clearstream Banking AG (CBF), registered office at Mergenthaleralle 61, 65760 Eschborn, Germany, registered with the Commercial Register of the District Court in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, under number HRB 7500.