FAQs - Implementation and Transition

Further details on technical accreditation started to be published at the start of April 2020. Information is available in the Technical Accreditation section and also on messaging accreditation scripts.

All vendors and those developing software that interface to CHESS will need to accredit.  ASX are looking to automate this phase as much as possible.  There will also be periods where ASX will need to schedule specific testing activities and therefore specific periods may need to be booked in advance via our Customer Readiness team.

ASX will provide more details in Q2 2020.

The migration dress rehearsals are planned to mimic the cutover weekend.  A detailed run sheet still needs to be prepared, but it is likely that the activities for participants will start Saturday morning and complete by Sunday evening.  ASX mentioned in the webinar on 25 October 2019 that we are reviewing day 1 processing requirements for migration dress rehearsals. 

Further information on this point will be provided in due course.

ASX will provide further details to the Implementation and Transition working group on the specifics of each MDR including expected scenarios, run book and criteria for successful completion. For MDR1, for example, the most important activity for participants will be to prove they can run through all cut-over activities.

Further information on this point will be provided in due course.

In October 2019 ASX stated it would not coordinate testing between customers across the market. We have taken market feedback on-board and are currently in the process of analysing this. Further information will be provided to the Implementation and Transition working group in due course.

ASX will have all CHESS Users attest; there is no obligation for a software provider to attest. It's ultimately the responsibility of each CHESS User (and their business) to attest.

ASX have considered this option along with a number of other approaches to the single cut over weekend but at this stage intend to run day one as a normal settlement day. Further details about the cutover weekend and migration dress rehearsals will be provided in due course.

CHESS users will need to be connected to the target production environment for migration dress rehearsals (MDR).  This is the only activity that happens in the “target production” environment prior to go live.  All other activities will be executed in the Industry Test Environment (ITE).  Migration dress rehearsals will happen in parallel to other activities in ITE. Please refer to the IWT overview page in our Environments area of Technical Documentation.

Yes, for those of you connected to the Customer Development Environment (CDE) you will have already signed the Subscriber Technical Access (STA) agreement along with an order form for the CDE environment.

If an organisation has already signed the STA agreement then you will only need to sign a new order form for access to the Industry Test Environment (ITE).

Every entity will need to have an STA agreement signed for ITE, so if today your business is a clearing and settlement participant as well as a payment provider as an example you will have to have sign a form for each legal entity.

The new ITE application forms are available in the ASX technical documentation website here.

ASX would like to start this process as soon as practically feasible and expect this can commence from April 2020. Where it makes sense we will be configuring both ITE and PROD environments in parallel. This process will commence after ASX have received the appropriate application forms.

This process will commence after ASX have received the appropriate order forms.

Based on your connectivity choice you may require a combination of TLS and ISO signing certificates and this process will start in May next year.

In the November 2019 Implementation & Transition working group webinar we asked all existing ASX Net clients who did not use ASX Net to connect to CHESS today to ensure they had the appropriate ability to use existing network infrastructure.

This requires having your network engineers contact your ASX Business Development Manager to discuss this. If you have any trouble connecting those two groups, please e-mail CHESSReplacement@asx.com.au and we’ll help you facilitate that discussion.

The browser will be made available from the start of the Industry Test Environment (ITE).

In terms of functionality we’ll progressively be releasing browser features on our ASX technical documentation website, details can be found here.

Updates on the browser interface will also be provided to the Implementation & Transition working group.

No. ITE and PROD will be two separate environments. All testing will be carried out in ITE with the exception of the migration dress rehearsals which will run in the ‘to be PROD’ environment.

A key activity to minimising the volume of data will be to reduce the number of dormant HINs in advance of the cut-over weekend.

Outside of that, all active state transactions will be migrated by the ASX.   We do not expect any data to be migrated in client’s host systems.

Data to be migrated from CHESS over the cut-over weekend includes:

• All client HINs, holdings and sub-positions

• All open settlement obligations (including underling trade executions)

• All in-flight transactions pending further analysis on unmatched DVP instructions which may be cancelled

ASX recently communicated its approach to the management of inflight transactions at the January 2020 I&T working group webinar. The webinar included information on how ASX proposes to manage the migration of inflight settlement obligations and transactions that are not planned to be migrated to the replacement system. Please refer to published materials here.

ASX plans to migrate the CHESS ID into the new platform in a deterministic way.  So if it’s X in the old system it’ll be a derivative of that in the new system.  Attributes such as settlement obligation ID’s will be carried forward.

There are some ‘corner cases’ where a single trade ID in CHESS today will need to be split into two in the new system, but again this will be deterministic, i.e.  000000111 becomes B000000111 or S000000111.

Migration dress rehearsals will run on point in time data, likely to a copy of production data taken one or two weeks prior to the rehearsal weekend.

ASX recently communicated its approach to the management of inflight transactions at the January 2020 I&T working group webinar. The webinar included information on how ASX proposes to manage the migration of inflight settlement obligations and transactions that are not planned to be migrated to the replacement system. Please refer to published materials here.

A key activity is removal of dormant HINs and ASX communicated this at the November 2019 I&T working group webinar, including what steps you can take now to cancel dormant accounts. Please refer to published materials here.

As a reminder, please email participant.transitions@asx.com.au to notify intentions of bulk cancellation by end of February.

In addition, ASX communicated at the January 2020 I&T working group webinar, other steps to be taken including cancelling transactions and messages in the old system and then having CHESS users re-submit in the new system. Please refer to published materials here.

The first holder is classified as the Primary Account holder and the communication is to be addressed to this holder, this is per the existing rules & constitutions.

The new format has two key attributes relating to account name.

• The actual account name and

• The account mailing addressee

The account name will always contain the names of all holders.
The account mailing addressee will contain the name that is used for mailing purposes.
Where the total length of a joint name including the plus symbol is greater than 80 characters, the account mailing addressee will only contain the Primary Account holder name. The reason for this is to ensure that the name and address fits within the Australian postal window size specifications.

It is the named party that will only be recorded. Also, for the purpose of clarity, in the example of a company we will not be recording the directors.

ASX would expect that where this situation eventuates, the action taken by the Issuer will be the same as it is today.

There is no mandate for Share Registries to adopt the new ISO20022 format for Account Registration Details within their system.

However, Share Registries will need the capability to manage and validate Account Registration Details received in the ISO20022 format from CHESS Replacement. For example, transactions relating to Transfers, Conversions or SRN Enquiries the Share Registries will need to validate and match Account Registration Details to facilitate these workflows regardless of whether they have adopted the new ISO20022 format or not within their system.

Share Registries that support mFund transactions will also need to accept the Account Registration Details in the ISO 20022 format.

As part of the migration to the new system, ASX will map all Australian and New Zealand addresses fully into the new standards.

For all remaining foreign addresses, ASX will not be migrating Town Name, State and Postcode into the specific ISO 20022 fields. This is due to the fact current addresses are not sufficiently structured to undertake this mapping.

Instead ASX will map Town Name, State and Postcode in their current format into available address lines 1, 2 and 3.

The Town Name is currently mandatory in the acct_002 ISO message. ASX will now make this optional.

For the Creation of new Accounts and Modification to existing accounts, the Town Name will remain mandatory. So where a Sponsoring Participant either creates a new account (acct_001) or updates an existing account (acct_003) in the future, the Town Name must be supplied.

As part of the new standards, all holders need to be identified as either individual or company.

Because it is not possible to identify based on name alone if a holder is an individual or company as part of the migration all holders will be migrated and classified as ‘Other’.

There will be no capability for a Sponsoring Participant to provide a list of Holder Types to the ASX, so that ASX can record as an ‘individual’ or ‘company’. To introduce such capabilities would increase the effort and complexity of account migration on the cut-over weekend for the ASX.

As mentioned in the I&T working group webinar in November 2019, ASX will provide the means via the acct_003 message for a Sponsoring Participant to update Holder Type from ‘OTHR’ to Individual or Company.

ASX published details and criteria used to assess what features will be classified as mandatory versus what features are classified as optional in the CHESS Replacement system.  This information was included in the November 2019 I&T working group webinar. Please refer to published materials here.  For mandatory new Business Requirements, this will mean that:

• Users that communicate with the new system via ISO 20022 or Ledger API access, for the purpose of these new business requirements, must use software products (either vendor provided or in-house developed) that is technically accredited for these functions. In case of vendor provided software, each vendor will need to be technically accredited for this purpose, rather than the customer.

• Users must also evidence and attest to operational readiness. This includes users of the Browser.

• For some of the new business requirements, users will also have to process messages received, and provide messages to the new system.

There will be different impacts on users depending on the specific new business requirement, for example:

Settlement Locks for CHESS holdings:

• For participants performing settlement locks via ISO 20022 or Ledger API, it must be done using technically accredited software.

• Participants will be required to operationally attest to their readiness to support this business requirement. This includes those participants intending to use the browser for this transaction.

• It is optional for participants to use this functionality, other than for the mandatory settlement lock for unilateral batch instructions moving securities from accumulation account to settlement account. Participants will be able to continue to make use of accumulation entrepots for purpose of settlement of client trades, subject to rules consultation feedback.

A summary of mandatory/optional classification of new business requirements has been published on the CHESS Replacement scope pages here.

More on this topic will be included in future Implementation & Transition Working Groups, see dates here.