Overview

The SMART/Track for Corporate Action Liability Notification Service is a Web-based system that enables automated communication and tracking of corporate action liability notices. Participants are able to create, send, process and track such notices easily through the system, and various email notifications are generated automatically when certain activity occurs.

The service is currently available for use by any existing NSCC clearing firm or DTC settling member.

The principal benefits of the system are:

• Reduces the costs and risk associated with the current manual, paper-based fax and phone notification system.
• Provides an audit trail with a complete record of actions taken regarding a notice, including time, date and the person taking the action. An online archive retains the notices for seven years.
• A link to the Reorganization Inquiry for Participants System (RIPS) allows some fields to be populated automatically when the corporate action event is in the RIPS system.
• Reduces message delivery risk through tracking and acknowledgment functionality.

In order to use the service, each user must have a digital certificate issued to him or her by DTCC through their firm's Access Coordinator. The use of the digital certificate ensures the security of access to the service. Once the digital certificate is issued, the user must have access to a PC with Internet access, an appropriate high-encryption browser installed, and the digital certificate installed on the computer.

Once signed into the service, users have the choice of creating a notice, viewing notices they have received and acting on them, or searching for notices using specific field criteria.

Authorized users may create and send a notice to a single or multiple counterparties up to a maximum of 20. In the case where multiple copies of the notice will be sent out, the information does not have to be recreated for each message.

The user's personal information (name, email address, brokerage firm) is captured as part of the registration process, while the user's phone number is captured in the Corporate Action Liability Notification Service. The user information is automatically populated when the user creates a new notice. Users must provide both their counterparty's DTC participant number and the valid CUSIP of the security for which they are creating a notice. In the future, other security identifiers may be added to the system.

Once the security ID is provided, all recent offer information on that security will become available from the RIPS database. Users may select to use one of the offers in the database, or select "Other" and fill in each field manually. If a user selects an offer from the RIPS database, then the fields will be automatically populated.

Users can then fill in the remaining fields detailing their notice of liability and submit the notice to the system. The Corporate Action Liability Notification Service reviews the data to ensure it is complete and then forwards it to the counterparty indicated. The counterparty can accept the notice or reject it. The counterparty can either reject a notice using one of the specific designated reasons, or enter a comment in the free-form field. For the create, reject and cancel processes, there is a free-form field for adding comments or notes to the notice.

The system will generate email notifications to customers when the sender reduces the liability quantity or cancels the notice or if a change in RIPS has caused an alert to be generated. E-mail notifications are also generated at the start of the day indicating all notices for which action needs to be taken that day, as well as intra-day for notices sent that day if the return date, DTC expiration date or DTC "protect date" equals that day's date.

Participant firms that initiate a notice can cancel the notice or reduce the liability quantity if necessary.

The status of all notices can be viewed, and all notices can be searched or sorted using specific field criteria as desired by the user.

Please call Relationship Management at 1 888.382.2721.