Euroclear Bank and Clearstream have announced a series of improvements to the settlement and matching between the two international central securities depositories (ICSDs), which previously committed to making continuous enhancements to the bridge in order to support market participants with fast, efficient and reliable connectivity.

The upgrades are aimed at improving overall bridge settlement efficiency and offer extended timeframes in which the ICSDs’ clients carry out their trades on all eligible securities.

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The two companies promise that the enhancements to the bridge will almost triple the settlement turnaround in an operational day, with the number of settlement windows increasing to 48 windows from 17. It also reduces daytime settlement turnaround to 10–40 minutes down from 35–90 minutes.

Secondly, they provide more timely and frequent information and extend currency input deadlines for clients to be nearer to local market deadlines.

Finally, the settlement day period between the two ICSDs will be extended by 35 minutes, from 18:30 CET to 19:05 CET.

In a statement, Clearstream noted: “Forming the second phase in a series of Bridge improvements agreed by the two ICSDs in 2015, these Bridge improvements support the growth of same-day cross-border collateral movements and repo transactions, helping to address one of the key challenges of global securities markets. Phase one of the Bridge enhancements was successfully implemented in September 2015, bringing the Bridge into a currency-driven model with significant improvements to input deadlines for core currencies (EUR, GBP, USD).”