Clearing & Settlement

The Swiss financial market infrastructure is often referred to as the Swiss Value Chain.

The infrastructure providers of the Swiss financial market recognised at an early stage how the processing of securities transactions might be made more efficient and the costs reduced. The principle of Straight Through Processing (STP) was vigorously applied; existing processes were automated, restructured and embedded within international frameworks.

Right from the start, the SWX Platform was developed as a fully integrated trading platform with direct links into the settlement infrastructure, as locked-in transactions, thereby removing any requirement for dual entry into multiple environments. Executing a transaction on exchange leads to a fully automated instruction for eligible products to the CCP and for others directly into settlement at the Central Securities Depository (CSD).

Usually, neither the front or the back office are involved manually in the process, so SWX market participants could enjoy savings of up to 80 % in back-office settlement due to the full STP links in place.

The result is that processing securities within the Swiss Value Chain is one of the most efficient within Europe.

To complement this, SWX introduced a Central Counterparty Service using the CCP services of SIS x-clear AG (SIS x-clear).