T2S Migration Weekend in September 2023 – Information on the migration activities
In addition to Announcements A23058, A23053 and A23028 Clearstream Banking AG, Frankfurt1, (CBF) informs clients about the migration of several central securities depositories (CSDs) and one national bank to TARGET2-Securities (T2S) on
the weekend 9 and 10 September 2023
for the business day Monday, 11 September 2023
This Announcement shows the intended timeline and modifications in the T2S operational day between Friday, 8, and Monday, 11 September 2023.
T2S migrations in September 2023
Besides Euroclear Bank (EB), the following CSDs and national bank will migrate to T2S:
- Euroclear Finland LtD (EFi)
- Croatian CSD Central Depository and Clearing Company Inc. (SKDD)
- Bulgarian CSD Central Depository AD (CDAD) and
- Bulgarian National Bank (BNB).
For these three CSDs and this national bank, settlement via Clearstream Banking S.A., Luxembourg, (CBL), and thereafter through the CSDs or local depositories, continues to be offered. As of November 2023, securities issued by EFi are planned to receive Collective Safe Custody (CSC) status and to be included in the OneClearstream service (C23018). Clearstream clients’ settlement against Euroclear Bank counterparties will not be affected by EB’s migration to T2S.
Impact on the CBF business day for the migration weekend
The T2S migration weekend follows the “T2S Release Weekend Schedule”. The timeline of the operational day and respective reporting during the migration weekend will be adapted accordingly.
Based on the currently available information, the following assumptions can be made:
- Clients acting in ICP mode and using the CBF connectivity channels via Swift, MQ, File Transfer (FT) or ClearstreamXact need to consider that any instruction transmitted between Friday, 8 September 2023 at 20:00, and the finalisation of the migration phase on Sunday, 10 September 2023 around 07:00, will be queued in the connectivity layer. All instructions received by Friday, 8 September 2023, 19:45 which could not be processed, as well as queued instructions, will be processed after the migration. During the migration weekend, only clients transmitting instructions via Swift to CBF will receive an acknowledgement upon receipt of the instruction based on their existing message subscription.
- The opening hours of Clearstream Banking’s online functionalities will be modified: The CASCADE HOST / PC frontend and Xact Web Portal will be available until Friday, 8 September 2023, 20:00. Clients are requested not to enter, modify or cancel instructions after this time. The systems are planned to be available again on Sunday, 10 September 2023, from 07:30 to 11:30.
- Clients acting in ICP mode and using an automated connectivity channel (Swift, MQ or FT) to receive the CBF settlement reporting need to check the reporting times, where applicable, as T2S will close the interface for inbound messages from Friday, 8 September 2023, 20:00, to Sunday, 10 September 2023, 3:00 am. The CBF settlement day 8 September 2023 is planned to be closed at 19:30. Afterwards, the End of Day (EoD) reporting will be prepared and sent. CBF will provide the files according to the existing message subscription. Depending on the T2S migration weekend timeline, files might be empty and will be transmitted only if the related messages have been subscribed for. In addition, the clients’ technical infrastructure should accept and store the provided files any time during the T2S migration weekend. Otherwise, the information/data will be lost.
- On Friday evening, 8 September 2023, 20:00, T2S will presumably close the straight-through processing channel (STP, A2A) for incoming messages. On Sunday morning, 10 September 2023, 11:30, T2S is expected to start its maintenance window. Incoming instructions that will reach T2S during the migration phase or maintenance window are queued. After the reopening of T2S on Monday, 11 September 2023, at around 02:30, once the A2A channel will be available, these instructions will be processed in line with the T2S operational day.
- Clients acting in DCP mode and using the “YCON” procedure to receive real-time settlement reporting via CBF need to consider that these messages will be transmitted on Sunday, 10 September 2023, 09:00, after CBF has started to provide the settlement results in ICP mode.
- For the processing via
- KADI (Corporate action processing for markets [CH, US] and securities [for example, funds] not migrated by the CAH project) and
- Custody (Corporate action processing for OneClearstream markets and for securities migrated by the CAH project with CBF in its role as Issuer CSD)
the following processing applies:
Settlement instructions resulting from corporate actions processing will be created on Friday, 8 September 2023, in line with the regular business day and presented to T2S before the system will be closed for the migration activities. On this processing day, clients will receive Corporate Actions messages (MT564, MT568) only from 23:00, deviating from the regular transmission time (that is, 19:30). Additionally, the transmission times of Corporate Action Confirmations (MT566) will be modified. The reporting, which is generated via Custody and KADI can be provided on Sunday, 10 September 2023, after 9:00 until the maintenance windows will start (at around 11:30). - In general, the processing at CBL is not impacted by the T2S migration weekend procedure. The procedures in CBL regarding the settlement of DvP instructions in foreign currencies, stock exchange trades in non-collective safe custody (NCSC) as well as for the markets included in the Local Market Partner (LMP) concept will continue to run in the existing business as usual mode. However, the securities settlement of instructions which involve CBF accounts, and especially the settlement of instructions against a foreign currency, will be delayed. The cash management at CBL will be conducted according to the CBL timeline and the cash settlement result will be presented to CBF. CBF will queue these results. The settlement of the securities leg will be possible once CBF transmits the release instruction for the “CoSD Hold” to T2S. Therefore, the reporting of the cash and securities settlement will be provided at different times.
- CBF’s processing with the T2S Out-CSDs DTCC and SIX SIS will be delayed as well. Nevertheless, client settlement instructions will be forwarded to these CSDs in accordance with the market deadlines. Settlement results and feedback for pending instructions from these CSDs will be transmitted to T2S once CBF releases the queued instructions for the T2S Real-time Settlement (RTS) cycle scheduled for Sunday, 10 September 2023.
CBF client communication on the migration weekend
During the T2S migration weekend, “Operational News” will be published on the Clearstream website only if the migration will be (partially) stopped and reversed or will be so late that CBF clients will be impacted by this delay in their settlement activities on Monday morning. Clients can set up the subscription to "Operational News" and their "Alerts" in the MyClearstream section under Subscriptions respectively under Real-time alerts. More specifically, CBF recommends the subscription to TARGET2-Securities alerts by Friday, 8 September 2023, at the latest.
On Friday, 8 September 2023, 20:00, clients can monitor ECB’s website where T2S regularly reports the latest migration and operational status.
CBF indicative timeline for the migration weekend
The attached timeline indicates the changes to the CBF operational schedule during the T2S Migration Weekend.
The timeline created by CBF is based on the T2S Playbook for the migration weekend provided end of August 2023. The plan covers the period from Friday, 8 September 2023, 18:45, to Monday, 11 September 2023, 06:00. Events and processes before and after this specific period can be considered as unchanged. The changes are shown in the “Revision” column as follows:
Contact
For further information, clients may contact Clearstream Banking Client Services or their Relationship Officer. Particular questions related to this Announcement will be routed to the experts of the T2S Settlement Functionality team.
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1. This Announcement is published by Clearstream Banking AG (CBF), registered office at Mergenthalerallee 61, 65760 Eschborn, Germany, registered with the Commercial Register of the District Court in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, under number HRB 7500.