FEAS Yearbook FEAS Yearbook 2002 | Page 10

FEDERATION OF EURO-ASIAN STOCK EXCHANGES > YEARBOOK 2002/2003 > PAGE 8 TAKASBANK IMPORTANCE OF INTERNATIONAL SECURITIES STANDARDS FOR STP AND THE ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF TAKASBANK Deregulation, continuous development in information technologies, and economic and political alliances have been the main trends triggering several important facts in the financial markets for the past two decades. In terms of the securities business, mobility of capital and securities is higher than ever, both on a national and cross-border scale; national borders are now almost invisible and there is a dramatic increase in cross-border investments and transactions. As a result, the complexity of the transactions and their associated risks have increased. Today a securities transaction chain covers various processes starting from the trade order until the finality of settlement. The increased complexity of the transactions has inherent operational risks, and failures do occur in the timely completion of the transactions. Thus, the Straight Through Processing (STP) concept has gained a wide range of attention in capital markets throughout the world as its application is deemed essential to overcome operational deficiencies in the whole securities transaction chain. Automation falls short if data are wrong. Therefore, inconsistent, inaccurate and incomplete reference data may cause STP failures. Four out of five financial institutions see badly managed reference data as a major cause of internal STP failure, according to reports published by Tower Group, Reuters and Capco. Within this context, international securities standards, for reference data and messages, are key ingredients of STP applications and more than ever have gained importance. ISO TC68/SC4 is the relevant subcommittee of the International Standards Organization (ISO), mainly responsible for the development and maintenance of international securities standards. TC68 is one of the 200 technical committees of ISO responsible for those standards related with “finance”; while SC4 is one of the three subcommittees of TC68 with the definition of “securities and related financial instruments – financial messages and codes.” The scope of SC4 is defined as “creation and maintenance and promotion of international standards required to support cross-border securities business and effective and consistent telecommunication between business entities involved in the various sectors of the securities and banking industries (However, this does not include data and information security and retail card related consumer transactions)”. International securities standards under the scope of SC4 are listed below: STANDARDS NAME ISO 6166 Securities and related financial instruments – international securities identification numbering system (ISIN) ISO 6536 Bank operations – standard scheme for drawing lists ISO 7341 Banking – Nostro accounts reconciliation ISO 7746 Banking – telex formats for inter-bank messages ISO 8109 Banking and related financial services – securities – format of eurobonds ISO 8532 Securities – format for transmission of certificate numbers ISO 9019 Securities – numbering of certificates ISO 9144 Securities – optical character recognition line – position and structure ISO 9362 Banking – banking telecommunication messages – bank identifier codes (BIC) ISO 10383 Codes for exchanges and regulated markets – market identifier codes (MIC) ISO 10962 Securities and related financial instruments – classification of financial instruments (CFI code) ISO 13616 Banking and related financial services – international bank account number (IBAN) ISO 15022-1, 2 Securities – scheme for messages (Data Field Dictionary and Catalogue of Messages) Part 1: Data field and message design rules and guidelines Part 2: Maintenance of the Data Field Dictionary and Catalogue of Messages