EBA CLEARING Shareholders Meeting Report of the Board 14 Th June 2011 Contents
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EBA CLEARING Shareholders Meeting Report of the Board 14 th June 2011 Contents 1. The Company’s activities in 2010 3 1.1 Introduction 3 1.2 EURO1/STEP1 Services 3 1.3 STEP2 Services 6 1.4 Operations of the Clearing Systems 10 1.5 Activities of Board Committees 12 1.6 Corporate matters 16 1.7 Financial situation 18 2. The Company’s activities in 2011 22 2.1 EURO1/STEP1 Services 22 2.2 STEP2 Services 25 2.3 Operations of the Clearing Systems 27 2.4 E-services 28 2.5 Other relevant matters of interest 29 Table of Appendices 30 Appendix 1: Changes in EURO1/STEP1 participation 30 Appendix 2: List of direct participants in EURO1/STEP1 33 Appendix 3: List of direct STEP2 participants 42 Appendix 4: Annual accounts for 20 10 54 layout: www. quadratpunkt.de photo credit: © Jean Schweitzer/Shutterstock.com 2 EBA CLEARING Shareholders Meeting 14 th June 2011 // Report of the Board 1. The Company’s activities in 2010 The period under report is 1 st January 2010 to 31 st December 2010. 1.1 Introduction Over the past year, EBA CLEARING continued to maintain and evolve its pan-European payment infrastructure in line with the needs and expectations of its shareholders and users. The Company closely coordinated all develop - ment and implementation activities with its users to ensure that the pace of change suited all parties involved. At the same time, EBA CLEARING continued to leverage its core competencies of operational robustness and strong cost management. The Company also strove to maintain the dynamism to underpin its core ongoing activities. Overall, EBA CLEARING confirmed its position as a key infrastructure provider firmly rooted in the co-operative space of the European payments industry. The work accomplished by the Company in 2010 supported its shareholders in coping with new industry challenges by minimising their infrastructure costs, limiting the risks coming from fragmented solutions, and by enabling an efficient centralisation of their liquidity. EBA CLEARING continued discussions throughout 2010 with banking communities to support their migration to SEPA, where the Company is well-placed to offer migration paths for credit transfers and direct debits. While the industry acknowledged that the vast majority of payments will eventually become SEPA payments, the remainder will likely have to be handled at a high processing cost. Thus, alternative ways to reduce overall costs were being sought and the Company has evaluated possible solutions in this regard. 1.2 EURO1/STEP1 2010 saw EURO1 volumes start to pick up again after a drop in the aftermath Services of the financial crisis; on average, the daily sending volume increased by three to four percent over the previous year. The greatest impact for the system and its users was in the area of regulation where both national and pan-European authorities were determined not to allow a repeat of the 2009 situation to occur. To that end, several new regulatory authorities were created, including the European Banking Authority. The Authority is now charged with establishing a new round of stress tests for the banking community which will be closely scrutinised following the showing of the previous tests, where banks that had passed, were shortly thereafter in extreme difficulties. 3 EBA CLEARING Shareholders Meeting 14 th June 2011 // Report of the Board Oversight EURO1 was classified as a Critical Ancillary System and as such had in turn to designate its own critical participants. It was agreed with the European Central Bank (ECB) that in fact all EURO1 Participants were critical, given the settlement conditions and the survivors pay structure for the loss sharing arrangements. During the course of 2010, the ECB undertook a full re-assessment of EURO1 against the 10 Core Principles for Systemically Important Payments Systems (SIPS) as were issued in 2001. This was the third full comprehensive oversight assessment of EURO1 since its launch in 1999. The assessment was carried out by the ECB as lead overseer with the involvement of representatives of five volunteering national central banks of the Eurosystem. A positive outcome of the EURO1 oversight assessment is expected to be received during 2011. In parallel, completion of the oversight assessment of EURO1 against compliance with the Business Continuity Oversight Expectations for Systemically Important Payment Systems was taking place. This exercise is closely interrelated with fulfilling Core Principle VII. In the aftermath of the crisis, the ECB decided to create a simulator for EURO1, having already created a simulator for TARGET2. The intention is to model scenarios and to analyse what the cross-system impact could be, if liquidity dried up for individual banks or banking groups or countries. The Board agreed that EBA CLEARING should create its own simulator for EURO1 so that EBA CLEARING can perform simulations and modelling for its own purposes. Work started on calculating what could be the liquidity efficiency of the system so that EURO1 could be compared with other high-value payment systems worldwide. EURO1 Reform Program In October 2010, the opportunity was taken to launch the EURO1 Reform Program. Given the risk and liquidity pressures now acting upon the bank participants, post-crisis, it was important to re-assess EURO1 to ensure it continues to offer the optimum in terms of risk control and liquidity manage - ment, especially since the bilateral limit procedures for liquidity generation have been in place for over 10 years without being changed. 4 EBA CLEARING Shareholders Meeting 14 th June 2011 // Report of the Board A Future Development Group was created from among the top users of the system, that at the same time were also designated Systemically Important Banking Groups consisting of both treasury and payments specialists. They will work towards identifying potential areas for refining the current structure. Settlement With effect from 7 th June 2010, the settlement process at the end of the operating day moved from the Payments Module (PM) to Ancillary System Interface model 4 (ASI4) in TARGET2. This effectively reduced operational risk for the settlement, since ASI4 requires the automatic debiting of participants’ accounts in TARGET2 during the pay-in phase. The liquidity risk still remains as banks must have sufficient funds on their accounts. Directory A working group was established to assess where the Directory procedures could be improved to encourage greater usage of the Directory by the user community, since not only all EURO1 Participants and STEP1 Banks can input data, but so can all EURO1 and STEP1 Sub-Participants. SWIFT Releases In 2010, there was no functional release but there was a technical release (11.0) in November. This related to the move from the US operational site to the new second European operational site in Switzerland, thereby meeting the European banking industry’s wish to maintain all their pay - ments-related data within Europe. At the beginning of 2011 EBA CLEARING received formal confirmation that all data and machinery relating to EBA CLEARING services previously held in the US had been removed or destroyed. 5 EBA CLEARING Shareholders Meeting 14 th June 2011 // Report of the Board Participation Throughout the year, the EURO1 application process for OTP Bank from Hungary was being completed. The bank successfully connected in December 2010 and as such was the first independent bank from Central and Eastern Europe to join EURO1. This brought the total number of EURO1 Participants to 67 at the end of the year. While other significant mergers were completed in 2010, for example the RBS acquisition of ABN-AMRO Bank and the Wells Fargo take-over of Wachovia Bank, none of these resulted in the loss of a participant and consequently the payment volumes were maintained. The number of pre-fund participants in EURO1 during 2010 stood at 10. The number of sub-participants in EURO1 remained stable at 58 with withdrawals being offset by new connections. Within STEP1 the number of participants reduced from 99 at the beginning of the year to 94. The number of sub-participants in STEP1 reduced from 50 to 47 in 2010. 1.3 STEP2 Services During 2010, the main activities of the Company regarding the STEP2 Services and platform were based around four work strands: 1. The ongoing work of attracting domestic volumes to the SCT Service; 2. The positioning of additional services on the STEP2 platform; 3. The gradual ramp up of the SDD services; 4. The mandatory release work and developments from the EPC Rulebooks. Banks and domestic communities were assessing throughout 2010 how to maximise the advantage of the SEPA investments they have made. XCT Service As the discussions continued around the nature and timing of an end-date for legacy payments and as some banks completed their migration from XCT to SCT, and the PSD bringing in D+1 processing for all payments from 1st January 2012, a study took place in mid-2010 to understand what should 6 EBA CLEARING Shareholders Meeting 14 th June 2011 // Report of the Board happen to the XCT Service and over what time frame. The result of the study led to a recommendation by the STEP2 XCT UAG to close down the Service in its current form by 31 st December 2011 since most transactions would need to migrate to the SCT Service anyway. Based upon the re- commendation of the STEP2 XCT UAG and taking into account the 1 For more information, please see outcome of an impact analysis, the decision has been taken in 2011 to close section 2.2 the STEP2 XCT Service on 5 th December 2011 (last settlement day) 1. SCT Service In March 2010, STEP2 SCT was enhanced to validate payments in real-time, even when the system is in a settlement phase.