Austraclear User Group Meeting Notes – November 2008
Introduction –
Mike Wolyncewicz welcomed members and handed the chair to Adrienne Barlow.
Austraclear Update –
Adrienne recapped the last six months, advising Graeme Beasley from Datacom would explain in layman’s terms two of the system issues encountered during this period and what is being done to rectify them. These being the system memory issue and Session Management or database locking. Another issue which affected our internet user access was a power surge in Auckland which caused a circuit breaker to trip in our Auckland box. This was quickly identified and connectivity was re-established by redirecting traffic through Wellington, which is serviced by a different provider.
When system issues were encountered during July a decision was made to move the payment systems to our Auckland site, allowing time to investigate the problem. The systems have subsequently been bought back to Wellington.
During September we extended ESAS End of Day by 30 minutes because an accountholder had encountered an operational issue and was unable to process all its payments before the scheduled cut off time. This had been reported as being a system issue, whereas in fact the extension was a business call and our extension procedures worked as intended.
September was a busy month, and on one day we experienced record volumes of uplifts, 1,000 transactions of which 700 were due to a large retail issuance.
Adrienne explained the issuance of ISINs (International security identification numbers) as there appears to be some confusion as to who is responsible for assigning them. Back in 1990 the Reserve Bank and the then New Zealand Stock Exchange, were appointed joint agents, Reserve Bank for debt securities and the New Zealand Stock Exchange for equities. When the Reserve Bank relinquished their registry services they gave Computershare Investor Services, Link Registry Services and the New Zealand Guardian Trust the authority to assign ISIN’s for debt securities.
System Issues –
Graeme Beasley advised that for four days during July there were CPU spikes – Datacom in partnership with Sun completed a full comparison between the production and the alternate environments. A thorough analysis of all recent system changes was undertaken. To assist in this analysis Datacom enhanced monitoring and completed network testing. This work enabled Datacom to recreate the issue in our test environment. Analysis revealed a Solaris Bug (i.e. in the operating system) and were advised if the latest operating system upgrade along with a workaround from Sun was installed this would address the issue. This suggestion was undertaken and was fully tested with no impact, but when implemented over a weekend issues appeared on the Sunday afternoon. A decision was made to restore the system back to close of business on Friday and contact Sun as to a way forward. Datacom are still in consultation with Sun to confirm a final fix which is expected to be released in the first quarter of 2009.
Session Management is an area of the application that controls user sessions. Occasional locking issues occur when sessions terminate and coincide with new sessions being established. A fix for this issue is being developed and will be implementated with the new TRANSACT function next year.
Business development –
Donna Bosch advised that enhancements to the ESASENQ screen had been implemented to production. A number of these changes were generated from customer feedback.
MT950 changes have also been implemented assisting Austraclear members who use the ASI or Host to Host Lite application to deliver transactions.
Donna advised that the ASI usage was continuing to grow. About 30% of all transactions are delivered this way and we currently have 3 members testing this interface.
Another area of improvement has been to system monitoring.
Kevin Jamieson advised that Datacom were developing the new TRANSACT screen which incorporates 50 functions into one. The first release for Reserve Bank to test is due in the next couple of weeks, with release to the industry for testing and familiarisation scheduled for March 2009. The changes Datacom are making to Session Management will be delivered at the same time.
Kevin thanked everyone for their feedback to the Securities Commission consultation document in regards to the proposed Registry Interface, which will remove risk and enhance turnaround times for lodges and uplifts. A draft Order and Council has been prepared and returned to the Securities Commission to be presented to government. We have commenced discussion with the Securities Commission as to what modifications to the Austraclear Rules might be required in order to have the new interface approved.
We have also had discussions with the NZX regarding inter-operability between Austraclear and NZX’s proposed new system. The industry requested that for market efficiency the two systems must talk to each other.
Advisory Committee –
Mike Wolyncewicz gave a brief update on the meeting of the Advisory
Committee the previous week and advised that Sarah Drennan (ABN Amro) had been
elected chair and Dave Mitchell (Computershare) Deputy Chair.
In Sarah’s absence Dave acknowledged that Scott Sinclair (ex Westpac) had been a great chair in the inaugural year of the set up of the committee and mediating when some difficult issues had been debated. Dave also advised that the membership are free to contact any member of the committee if they would like the committee to advise the RBNZ to give a matter some attention. A list of committee members is included in the User Group slides.
Credit Crisis –
Kelly Eckhold from the Reserve Bank presented an overview of the current financial crisis and what the Bank is doing to assist the NZ market to weather the storm – refer to slides.
NZCSD Business Activity –
Adrienne advised there was to be no change in fees and business activity had remained relatively stable over the last 6 months – refer to graphs in slides.
