NDC’s Alliance Lite deal will boost international standards in Russia

Market innovations aim to ease access and increase efficiency

On September 25, 2009 Lázaro Campos, CEO, SWIFT, and Nikolay Egorov, Senior Vice President, Member of the Executive Board of MICEX and Director General of the National Deposity Centre (NDC) signed an agreement which allows NDC's counterparties to access SWIFT and the local securities settlement infrastructure through a new channel based on Alliance Lite. Alliance Lite provides easy, secure and low-cost access to SWIFT over the internet.

Under the terms of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by NDC and SWIFT, NDC agreed to cooperate to support the adoption of ISO standards in Russia. "SWIFT and ISO are the international standards for secure, automated communication between financial market participants globally, reducing operational costs and risks and enabling improved straight-through processing (STP)," said Egorov. "By allowing all our customers to use ISO standards and SWIFT to conduct their business with NDC, we are supporting them in globalising their capability to conduct business around the world and not just in Russia. The addition of SWIFT's Alliance Lite as a channel for communication with NDC is especially significant for our customers who will benefit from the cost efficiencies and the ease of access Alliance Lite provides."

A key element of this cooperation is the joint work by SWIFT and NDC to encourage the use of Alliance Lite by NDC customers. During his speech at the Russian Settlement session at Sibos 2009, Egorov said, "The ability of financial institutions to access NDC, Russia's central settlement depository for the servicing of state securities, via Alliance Lite is a major step forward in aligning Russia's financial infrastructure to global standards. Adopting Alliance Lite would permit clients to access both NDC and other financial institutions in Russia and worldwide using internationally recognised standards.

During the same session at Sibos, Russian Central Bank payment systems director, Oleg Perestenko, said BESP, the RTGS system introduced in 2007, would demonstrate to international investors the "openness and transparency" of Russia's financial sector. Efforts will now go into making the system - which covers 11 time zones and replaces two-day with real-time settlement - "more efficient and less risky".

He identified as new business opportunities presented by the infrastructure, real-time money transfer to and from money markets via MICEX and redistribution of intraday liquidity. All credit institutions will participate in the system as from 2010.

Alain Raes, Chief Executive, EMEA, SWIFT said "NDC’s addition of Alliance Lite as a communications channel supports its strategic plan to further adopt international standards to improve automation in order to reduce costs and risks for its customers. We look forward to working closely with NDC in the future to maximise the value we are offering to our mutual customers.”

This success marks the continued endorsement of Russia's market infrastructures development and trusting SWIFT as a partner to their adoption of international standards.