Clearing & Settlement

Clearing and settlement are the processes used to effect and manage deliveries and transfers of securities and cash in connection with transactions.

Clearing is now generally accepted as a securities risk management process, supported by a clearing house or Central CounterParty (CCP), which offers benefits such as:

• Trade anonymity
• The elimination of counterparty risk
• The ability to support multi-lateral settlement netting

Settlement is the transfer of ownership and exchange of securities and cash, generally on a Delivery versus Payment (DvP) basis. This facilitates settlement finality of a trade and is usually supported by a Central Securities Depository (CSD) or International CSD (ICSD).

To gain the full efficiency benefits of a pan-European blue-chip equity market, it is not enough to have a competitively priced, world-class trading platform. The maximum cost and productivity savings can only be achieved by the exchange having a single rulebook and a fully integrated clearing and settlement infrastructure.

The SWX Europe market has been designed to offer just this. With a single rulebook and post-trade infrastructure covering trading and settlement for all blue-chip securities, we offer members an efficient integrated structure.

To complement this, SWX Europe introduced the first pan-European Central Counterparty Service using the CCP services of LCH.Clearnet Limited (LCH.Clearnet) and SIS x-clear AG (SIS x-clear).