The industry’s T+1 testing window, designed for full end-to-end testing, formally kicked-off the first of 21 bi-weekly cycles on August 14, 2023. Early indicators from the first week of the program have begun to filter in, with numbers showing the vast majority of the top industry firms already accessing the environment and testing the T+1 related changes made to their respective systems and processes.
Related: Preparing Mutual Fund Clients for T+1
While T+1 testing is not mandated by any industry group or by regulators, DTCC has been carefully monitoring all interactions with the testing environment since it opened in mid-August. DTCC has established an internal dashboard to track how many firms have been accessing the test environment and the types of tests and the scenarios they’re running. In the first week of activity:
- 100% of the largest 30 NSCC clients have already connected to the test environment and begun testing.
- 90% of the largest 10 ITP clients and 55% of the largest 30 ITP clients have begun testing.
- 70% of the largest 10 DTC clients and 15% of the largest 30 DTC clients have begun testing.
“We cannot emphasize this enough: robust and coordinated testing will be one of the most critical success factors,” said Michele Hillery, DTCC General Manager of Equity Clearing and DTC Settlement Service. “We are extremely encouraged to see such active participation and engagement with the T+1 test environment in this first week among our largest clients, and we are optimistic that these numbers will only continue to grow as testing extends over the next 9 months.”
“The T+1 Industry Testing Group, the DTCC Integration team and the DTCC Product Management team set the stage for this robust testing success that we are seeing,” said Robert Cavallo, DTCC Director, Clearance & Settlement Product Management. “For over a year, these teams have been working relentlessly to get ready for this moment: creating an extensive library of detailed testing documents on UST1.org to help firms prepare, hosting webinars, and getting firms connected with the new test environments – and as a result, these early numbers are very promising.”
Scheduled to run through May 31st, 2024, the industry test program includes opportunities for free-form testing and scripted test scenarios such as holiday processing, double settlement days and testing for recoverability and resiliency. Firms are encouraged to participate in as many testing cycles as they choose.
The industry’s T+1 testing window, designed for full end-to-end testing, formally kicked-off the first of 21 bi-weekly cycles on August 14, 2023.