State Street Corp.’s State Street Global Markets trading arm has teamed up with SSISearch to offer a so-called open industry standard for standard settlement instructions and other settlement information. The move brings State Street and SSISearch into the currently underserved area of standard settlement instructions, which has seen several industry initiatives take flight, but none as yet truly take hold.
State Street’s alliance with SSISearch gives access to the latter’s SSISearch Global Directory via State Street’s Global Link network and its post-trade confirmation, matching and settlement service, known as GTSS.
SSISearch Global Directory is a database of contact information and validated standard settlement instructions collected from industry participants. The directory is aimed at providing a single source of settlement instructions in order to help financial institutions improve straight-through-processing (STP) and achieve operational efficiencies. The database is available via secure web-site, accessible 24/7.
State Street’s Global Link is the bank’s electronic channel for providing institutional clients with access to a range of capabilities. These include research, decision-support tools and, increasingly, electronic trading facilities for equities, fixed income and foreign exchange. Currently, State Street says, Global Link is used by investment managers who manage 75% of the world’s professionally managed assets. This penetration, it hopes, will help it achieve broad adoption of its settlement instruction standard promulgated through the SSISearch Global Directory.
SSISearch has compiled two online directories of legally authenticated settlement information, through a consultation with CLS Bank International, whose member banks have agreed to contribute settlement instruction data and take full responsibility for the accuracy of that data. As well as the SSISearch Global Directory, which focuses on the foreign exchange, money markets and commercial payments sectors, SSISearch offers a directory of settlement instructions for the continuous linked settlement community, known as the Settlements Directory for CLS.
By teaming with SSISearch, State Street is offering Global Link clients the opportunity to relinquish maintenance of their own settlement instruction databases. This, State Street believes, will offer increased efficiency and reduced operational risk.
The capability is targeted at the electronic trading area populated by Global Link, where execution services are becoming increasingly complex and institutions need to automate as far as possible in order to realize efficiencies. With Global Link’s pedigree in the foreign exchange markets, and SSISearch Global Directory’s focus on currency and money markets, the new service will be targeted toward players in the global FX area.
In positioning themselves in this space, State Street and SSISearch join ranks with a number of players that have attempted to offer databases of accurate standard settlement instructions. These include the likes of CB.net with its BankSearchPlus database of BIC, sort code, standard settlement instructions and IBAN-to-BIC linkages, and SSIPublishingKey mechanism for banks to provide settlement details to their Swift counterparties.
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