Volante Technologies, a provider of innovative financial data Integration, has launched its TARGET2 Securities (T2S) Accelerator.

T2S, to be implemented by the European Central Bank (ECB) in 2015, is designed to improve post-trade efficiencies in Europe. Through the removal of barriers across countries, the new T2S settlement rules include changes to the messaging standards that underpin current messaging processes. At present, most securities settlement uses ISO 15022, which in response to the regulation, will change to ISO 20022 compliant XML to ensure T2S-compliance.

“T2S will ultimately help create efficiencies in post-trade securities resulting in lower overall settlement costs,” said Fiona Hamilton, vice president of EMEA operations at Volante Technologies. “However, participating firms face the challenge of migrating from the current ISO 15022 standards to the more comprehensive list of detailed T2S ISO 20022 compliant standards.”

The T2S Accelerator is designed to support rapid integration to the T2S settlement platform. It offers full T2S message library including cross field validations and where relevant, off-the-shelf transformations from existing ISO 15022 messages to the equivalent T2S messages.

Firms benefit from the flexibility to either automatically convert new messages or adapt messages in-house, by T2S participants including institutional banks, CSDs, global custodians and securities services companies.

“The constantly evolving financial climate is driving change, resulting in the emergence of new message formats across the financial services industry,” said Hamilton. “Using our newly launched Accelerator, firms can meet the T2S 2015 deadline and insulate their organizations from current and future demands, ensuring they remain competitive and successful.”

Separately, Swift, the financial messaging provider, announced last month that it had achieved a crucial milestone in the delivery of its Value Added Network (VAN) Solution for connectivity to T2S.

Following a public procurement process run by the Banca d’Italia on behalf of the Central Banks of the Eurosystem, SWIFT was awarded a license to provide connectivity services to T2S.

After completed an extensive series of test cases to prove that its system meets all technical and non-technical requirements of T2S, Swift now moves on to the next phases of the program, supporting the testing activities of the European Central Bank and direct T2S participants in preparation for the go-live of T2S planned as of June 2015.

“We are delighted to have reached this important milestone in the delivery of our connectivity solution for T2S, and I would like to thank the Banca d’Italia for its strong co-operation with us during the extensive series of tests,” said Alain Raes, chief executive, EMEA & Asia Pacific at Swift. “Among the many reasons customers are choosing the Swift VAN is the guaranteed operational excellence of our solution. Successful completion of network acceptance testing is yet another demonstration of this, and positions Swift well to move on to – and complete – the next phases of this crucial program for our community.”

Swift’s VAN Solution enables participants to connect to the T2S platform for the secure exchange of business information, in ISO 20022 format. A number of customers have already announced they will connect to T2S using the Swift VAN – including Clearstream, Euroclear, Iberclear, Interbolsa, KDD Central Securities Clearing Corporation, SIX Securities Services, BNP Paribas Securities Services, Citi, Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale Securities Services.