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Strate joins Link Up Markets
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14 September 2009
Left to right: Monica Singer, CEO, Strate. Thomas Kindler, Managing Director, LinkUpMarkets. Alain Raes, Chief Executive, SWIFT. |
Strate, South Africa’s central securities depository (CSD) has become the latest and first non-European member of Link Up Markets, the joint venture created in 2008 by CSDs to improve efficiency and reduce the costs of post-trade processing of cross-border securities transactions.
Strate was an early adopter of ISO 15022 standards and the SWIFT network for securities settlement and clearing. It has been a user for over 10 years. Fully committed to the SWIFT environment, it was natural for Strate to turn to SWIFT when it initiated discussions about Link Up Markets connectivity.
With the incorporation of South Africa, Link Up Markets will expand its geographical reach, encompassing nine CSDs, namely Clearstream Banking Frankfurt (Germany), Cyprus Stock Exchange (Cyprus), Hellenic Exchanges (Greece), IBERCLEAR (Spain), Oesterreichische Kontrollbank (Austria), SIX SIS (Switzerland), VP Securities (Denmark), VPS (Norway) and now Strate.
Link Up Markets was established as a common infrastructure to promote efficient cross-border processing capabilities through the easy implementation of links between CSDs.
“The incorporation of Strate into Link Up Markets is a milestone for this joint venture as it incorporates South Africa as the first non-European CSD and paves the way to make this a truly global initiative,” comments Tomas Kindler, Managing Director of Link Up Markets. “At the same time it increases the competitiveness of the South African market by providing new investment opportunities for its market participants and investors.”
As a member of Link Up Markets, Strate will be able to offer both local and international investors a unified basis for post-trade processing that will facilitate cross-border settlement between South Africa and the members of Link Up Markets. “Through Link Up Markets we will be able to provide investors with direct and indirect links to most of South Africa’s top investment destinations,” comments Monica Singer, CEO of Strate.
“Fully committed to the
SWIFT environment, it was
natural for Strate to turn
to SWIFT when it came
to initiating discussions
about Link Up Markets
connectivity.” |
By connecting to Link Up Markets, each participating CSD has access to the services of other participating CSD markets across all asset classes (excluding derivatives). Link Up Markets absorbs any differences in communication standards across the markets, while leveraging the existing infrastructures and processes of CSDs. As a result, the solution can be provided quickly and with minimal adaptations for the participating markets. Link Up Markets contributes to the efficiency and cost effectiveness of settling cross-border transactions by integrating processes and harmonising procedures across the participating markets.
From Link Up to AllianceIn a further development aimed at increasing the efficiency of the South African market, Strate announced in July that it would provide SWIFT Alliance Messenger services to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). Messenger replaces the JSE’s current MERVA/ESA technology by providing SWIFT message capture and processing facilities to the JSE and all the JSE and NSX equities members. Messenger is a front-end solution to SWIFT Alliance Access as the server application. Operators use Internet Explorer to communicate with Messenger through HTTPS, and Messenger communicates with the back-end instance of Access internally via a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
“The testing and implementation of Messenger through Strate was painless due to the joint effort between the parties with technical guidance from Strate and Perago,” observes Brett Kotze, General Manager, Clearing and Settlement, JSE. Among the top 2% of SWIFT users, Strate offers clients the largest SWIFT infrastructure in Africa.
“We are very excited to be offering our SAM services to the JSE and are confident that Strate has the infrastructure and expertise to provide these services to the financial markets in South Africa,” comments Manoj Puri, Head of IT at Strate.
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