The new “Standard for Sharing of Standard Settlement Instructions (SSIs)” are now published as final, by the Financial Markets Standards Board (FMSB). As confusion about the settlement instruction has been a main cause of trade settlement fails, industry seniors welcome the new standard as a step toward better-functioning pre-authentication and success rates.

Technically, the standard applies to firms who are members of FMSB when they share their own SSIs. Yet, the board recommends that any firm use it, to improve the matching across the industry at large. A main purpose is to support wider adoption of electronic solutions which should help boost the standardisation and pre-authentication.

The standards paper as such comes as a 9-page pdf, also summed up in a news release featuring comments from central industry pros.

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The standard is made up of two main parts: core principles – for the channels, processes and governance around sharing the SSIs – and ISO 20022-based templates, for when SSI instructions need to be sent manually after all.

“I am particularly pleased to see the range of FMSB Standards expanding to cover post-trade efficiencies with the publication of this Standard for sharing SSIs, as well as the recent Standard on Client Onboarding. These Standards will allow many of the recommendations set out by the Post-Trade Task Force initiated by the Bank, to improve efficiency across post-trade and client onboarding processes including by establishing standardised document requirements and data definitions, to be operationalised across the market,” comments Victoria Saporta, executive director of the markets directorate at the Bank of England, in the news release.