Financial Settlement
Overview
As a Central Counterparty, ECC guarantees financial fulfilment and carries out cash clearing for all transactions concluded on ECC’s Partner Exchanges.
ECC co-operates with international banks as Clearing Members, Settlement Banks, Multi-Currency Payment Banks and Correspondent Banks. For Euro settlement, the transfer is done via the robust and reliable T2 infrastructure of ECB.
ECC has been approved as a designated payment system according to Article 10 of the Settlement Finality Directive 98/26/EC. Payments in foreign currencies are settled with a selection of Correspondent Banks.
ECC has a harmonised invoicing and fee settlement process across all of its products, markets and asset classes.
Services for Third Parties
ECC provides fee settlement for its Partner Exchanges. This means that ECC collects the fees on behalf of the exchanges from the participants via their Clearing or Settlement Bank. The invoices are issued by the Partner Exchanges themselves.
Process
All payments are effected at fixed payment times and according to a payment calendar depending on the respective currency:
- Payments in EUR are processed at around 8 a.m. CET before market opening on T2 operating days
- Overnight payments in USD, GBP and JPY are processed at fixed times on all currency-specific business days
- USD at around 8 a.m. CET
- GBP at around 9 a.m. CET
- JPY at around 9 a.m. CET
Importing into Clearing Systems
All trades concluded on the spot markets of our Partner Exchanges are imported into ECC’s clearing system SMSS promptly after trading with the help of the existing ECC member ID (e.g. ABCEX).
Financial Settlement
Financial settlement of EUR takes place on every ECC business day (Monday to Friday, except T2 holidays). Financial settlement of foreign currencies (GBP, JPY, USD) takes place on every currency specific business day. The trades are netted out into one net payment amount per Clearing Member or Settlement Bank respectively. ECC will use Multi-Currency Payment Banks to manage all foreign currency related cash transactions. The Clearing Members can select a Correspondent Bank to keep cash accounts in the respective currencies.
The accounting cut-off is at 4:00 p.m. (CET). All trades concluded until 4:00 p.m. on the current day are settled on the next ECC business day (Payment Groups EUR_1600 and GBP_1600). Trades concluded after 4:00 p.m. are settled on the ECC business day after tomorrow (T+2).
Cascading
Several partner exchanges of ECC currently offer futures products (e.g. Power and Gas markets) with consecutive contract maturities, i.e. month, quarter, season and year. These futures contracts are underpinned by the cascading methodology of delivery. More information on the cascading process can be found in the Cascading Explainer below.
| Publishing date | Title | File |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-02-02 | Cascading Explainer | pdf (330 KB) |
Reporting
The delivery and payment day are displayed in the ECC Reports for spot market transactions. As an alternative to this, the data can be accessed via the ECC Member Area.