Tata Consultancy Services and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) have successfully gone live with CHESS Release 1, marking a key milestone in the modernisation of Australia’s post-trade clearing and settlement infrastructure.

Clearing House Electronic Subregister System (CHESS) is used to facilitate clearing and settlement of trades in eligible financial products. It supports transfer of legal title through the CHESS sub-register and enables delivery-versus-payment settlement by transferring securities and cash between buyers and sellers. Release 1 of the CHESS replacement program delivers the new clearing component.

As part of the project, TCS implemented its TCS BaNCS for Market Infrastructure and Quartz Gateway solutions. The deployment provides ASX with a modern cloud-based clearing solution designed to be high-performance, scalable and resilient across multiple asset classes. The platform supports real-time trade novation and netting, complies with industry standards, and enables connectivity with multiple Australian exchanges. It also supports ISO 15022, ISO 20022 and FIX messaging standards.

TCS said the system has been benchmarked to process more than 20 million trades per day, supporting ASX’s future growth with improved resilience and scalability.

Tim Whiteley, Chief Information Officer, ASX, said, “Release 1 of the CHESS Project marks a significant milestone in the modernisation of Australia’s critical market infrastructure supporting post-trade clearing and settlement services.” He added that the successful deployment has enabled ASX to progress toward Release 2, targeted for go-live in 2029.

R Vivekanand, President BFSI Products and Platforms, TCS, said, “We are proud to have partnered with ASX on their modernization strategy and the successful Go-Live of CHESS Release-1.”

ASX is implementing the CHESS Replacement Project in two stages to reduce risk and manage change. Following the completion of Release 1, TCS, ASX and industry participants have commenced work on Release 2.