Euroclear Finland, the Central Securities Depository (CSD) for Finland, has today announced that it has successfully migrated to a new CSD platform, the Infinity 2. Infinity 2 replaces multiple legacy systems with one modern, standards-based settlement and safekeeping platform for all assets in the book-entry system of Euroclear Finland.
“When faced with new requirements, such as the new EU Central Securities Depository Regulation (CSDR) and European Central Bank’s TARGET2-Securities platform (T2S), we had the same challenge as other CSDs in Europe; whether to modernize our legacy systems to meet the new requirements or to replace the entire system. We opted for the latter, in order to leverage the full benefits of advanced IT architecture and to ensure that our investment was not only spent on meeting regulatory requirements, but also to build a future ready, scalable platform ready to support future business”, says Hanna Vainio, CEO, Euroclear Finland.
Infinity 2 streamlines and standardizes the settlement processes and interfaces between the CSD and the participants' systems. The renewed CSD is now amongst the most advanced in Europe, supporting both nominee and direct holding account structures, fully CSDR compliant, and will give Euroclear Finland a future-proof platform to further develop services for customers.
Clients now benefit from direct access to all asset classes held in Euroclear Finland through a single user interface and ISO 15022 and ISO 20022 standardized messaging. Training new employees will be simpler, because there is only one system to learn and the system is more intuitive to use. Standards-based interfaces between the CSD and the customers' IT systems bring benefits and savings through more simplified processes as customers upgraded their systems. In the long-term, interface standardization has significant benefits for the entire international market.
”We would like to express a big thank you to our clients for their continued support and dedication to the migration project. The task of integrating dozens of clients’ and in-house IT systems and data has been formidable. The CSD is the underlying infrastructure for safekeeping and settlement of financial assets, and therefore getting every detail meticulously and securely done is crucial. We have been operating on the new system for three weeks, and we are confident with the performance of Infinity 2”, Hanna Vainio continues.
The Infinity 2 went live on 7 May 2018, replacing the legacy CSD systems of HEXClear, Infinity 1 and Central Register. The new system is a major milestone in Euroclear Finland’s multi-year transformation process of preparing to join European Central Bank’s TARGET2-Securities settlement platform and to face the new competitive landscape brought by the CSDR and the Capital Markets Union.
