Little information has been officially announced since central bank Riksbanken’s declaration of its preferred direction in 2021. Yet, indications now point towards a decision, on 18 June, for Sweden to join pan-European settlement platform Target2-Securities.

Seeking the full picture on Sweden’s approach to T2S? On 4 September, Riksbanken’s Christina Wejshammar, Head of the Payments Department, joins a panel with Euroclear Sweden’s Sandra Holmqvist, Citi’s Ola Mjørud, and others. Secure your free ticket today, here.

It is a brief proceedings summary in Swedish, from Riksbanken’s infrastructure council for payments and securities, that states the planned decision date for both the payments service T2 and the securities-settlement service T2S, on the Eurosystem’s platform set called Target: 18 June 2024.

“Riksbanken informed that the ongoing analyses are near-finalised and follow schedule. Further, Riksbanken summed up the feedback from consultations, [with] reference and working groups for the payments market and securities market regarding benefits and challenges with T2 and T2S,” the meeting summary concludes, with no further comments. The agenda point was preceded by a presentation by Euroclear Sweden on the experiences learnt from Finland’s recent T2S migration, implicitly referred to as a “major transformation”.

A decision would be Riksbanken’s first official statement on the topic since the 2021 announcement that using the Eurosystem’s platforms T2 and T2S would be its “preferred direction” for payments in Swedish kronor. However, the PostTrade 360° Stockholm 2022 conference saw Riksbanken’s deputy governor Martin Flodén take part in a panel to give context to the matter. This saw him state his view that Sweden has been lagging on harmonisation with the rest of Europe. (Full session video here.)

The directional decision by Riksbanken in 2021 had been preceded by an observation that “there is strong support in the Swedish securities market for harmonisation to European standards”.

Beside the 4-September session which will specifically discuss Sweden’s T2S approach, the PostTrade 360° Nordic 2024 conference will also feature this keynote by the European Central Bank’s George Kalogeropoulos, sharing the current status in the development of the Target platforms generally.