Financial industry calls for one-year extension to T2-T2S consolidation project timeline

22 June 2020

Following requests by the European financial community, the Market Infrastructure Board has reviewed the timeline of the T2-T2S consolidation project and has concluded that postponing its go-live by one year, from November 2021 to November 2022, would best accommodate the industry’s preferences. This is in the light of the challenges posed by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the rescheduling of SWIFT’s global migration of cross‑border payments to ISO 20022. The decision on a possible extension of the timeline will be taken by the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) and is expected by the end of July 2020.

A possible extension to the T2-T2S consolidation timeline was discussed with market representatives in the two advisory groups that counsel the Eurosystem on issues related to payments (AMI-Pay) and securities and collateral (AMI-SeCo). To gather the views of a wide range of market stakeholders, the ECB conducted a community readiness survey. The national financial communities in Europe were asked to consider the implications of recent challenges and to assess their ability to continue timely preparations for the T2-T2S consolidation and other related Eurosystem projects.

Most of the survey respondents called for the go-live of the T2-T2S consolidation project to be postponed by 12 months. While the COVID-19 pandemic has seriously hindered their preparations, the survey participants identified the revised timeline for the global migration of cross-border payments to ISO 20022 as the other main motivating factor.

The ECB and SWIFT will continue to work closely together during the ISO 20022 migration to ensure all market participants are able to realise the benefits that rich data services will bring to the market.