Banks

T2S will open up the European securities market for banks, making it more efficient and easily accessible. Benefits for market participants will range from the significant reduction of settlement fees for domestic and, above all, cross-border transactions, to the possibility to cut back-office costs by streamlining interfaces and centralising settlement activity. T2S will also lead to efficiency gains, enabling the banks to optimise their collateral and liquidity management. Moreover, T2S will provide new business opportunities for European banks and grant them access to new markets for asset-servicing.
To know more about the benefits T2S will bring about for market participants, please see also the T2S Benefits video.

Further benefits for the European banking community will derive from the harmonisation of market practices brought about and fostered by T2S.

To ensure that T2S meets their needs, banks have been involved in the project since its very inception. In particular, they substantially contributed to the definition of the T2S User Requirements.

In terms of project governance, banks are represented both at the European level, in the T2S Advisory Group and its substructures, and at the national level, in the National User Groups (NUGs). Via the NUGs banks can actively contribute to the T2S project and respond to market consultations. Banks are constantly kept updated and directly involved in the T2S discussion through the T2S Info Sessions, events organised by the ECB on a regular basis and open to all interested stakeholders.

In T2S, all banks will maintain their business and legal relationships with the respective CSDs and will be able to settle all transactions through potentially one single CSD, with a consequent rationalisation of systems and resources.

From a technical perspective, banks will be also offered the possibility, in agreement with their CSD, to become directly connected participants in T2S, i.e. to establish a direct network connection to the platform. The direct connectivity solution is expected to be appealing to big custodians with multiple CSD relations and to large investment banks. Network services will be supplied by a number of competing providers selected through a Eurosystem-led licensing procedure. T2S will act as an interface with each of the chosen providers and the connected participants will decide which of these they wish to use. more