April saw an eight-percentage point increase in the affirmation rate, which rose to 83.5 per cent from March’s 74.95 per cent. Sharing these figures in its latest progress statement, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) praises it as “significant progress” in the move towards T+1 come 28 May.
Prime broker affirmation rate was at 92 per cent, up from 83 per cent in March. DTCC credits this mainly to the continued efforts made in implementing real-time affirmation.
Investment manager auto affirmation rate jumped from 91 per cent to 93 per cent – 59 new investment managers were added to DTCC’s central trade matching (CTM) auto affirmation workflow during the month, bringing the total number of firms now leveraging this capability to 458.
Custodian or investment manager affirmation rate was 62 per cent, compared to 55 per cent in March. DTCC believes this improvement was due to more firms adopting TradeSuite IDs, which are used to confirm trades and automate trade detail distribution between counterparties.
Planning ahead
With only two weeks to T+1, DTCC urges market participants to “finalise their preparations, complete end-to-end testing, and ensure the completion of operational readiness plans for T+1 weekend”.
The firm has conducted a series of outage scenario exercises, also known as tabletops, to “assess the impacts of hypothetical outage scenarios in a T+1 settlement environment”. The findings have been consolidated in an infographic. It also suggests that market participants review its T+1 conversion guide, and the T+1 command centre by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA).
