FICC Will Pull the Plug on Green-Screen Terminals
Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC) recently announced that it is time for customer-members to bid their final goodbyes to the legacy “green-screen” terminal service. FICC expects to pull the plug on the long-running U.S. government securities trade-monitoring interface sometime in May, and will publish a specific date as it gets closer to that time.
“It was almost a year ago when we introduced our Real-Time Trade Matching [RTTM] web front-end system to make it easier for firms to manage their government securities trades once they’ve been submitted to FICC,” said Melanie Sterman, DTCC director, Product Management and Marketing/Fixed Income. “Most firms are already using RTTM’s speedier and more flexible web front-end to keep track of and update their transactions; now it’s time for the remaining firms to make the switch.”
The Delivery-versus-Payment function in RTTM’s web front-end already supports all repo and buy/sell trades, and once the green screens are shut down, Sterman said, the web front-end will be the only way to get screen access to RTTM functions. Over the past year, FICC took the same steps for GCF repos, moving them onto the web front-end as well.
Easier and more flexible
While all government securities trades submitted to FICC come through RTTM, most firms submit trades through interactive messaging on a computer-to-computer basis. Typically, it is after the initial trade submission that firms find the RTTM web front-end so useful.
What broker/dealers tell FICC is that the web front-end makes it easier for them to monitor their activity because it gives them a real-time view and ability to access various cuts of data to track, modify and cancel their own trades, or affirm or DK (Don’t Know) advisories. They can also query trades in a number of ways, and download query results to Excel spreadsheets.
“Now is the moment for all member firms that haven’t yet done so to begin moving all their terminal-based procedures to the RTTM web front-end,” Sterman said. “We recommend that they get started right away to ensure that their personnel are familiar with how to use the web front-end functions, and that they have appropriate levels of access to required functions before the shutdown of the old VMS terminal service.”
FICC advises that if people can’t get on to the web front-end or find they don’t have approval for certain functions on the system, they should contact their firm’s Remote Access Coordinator. If they are not sure who their coordinator is, send an email to ficcimplementation@dtcc.com @.