Recommendation 1 Recommendation 2 Recommendation 3 Recommendation 4

Recommendation 5 Recommendation 6 Recommendation 7 Recommendation 8

Market selection

Recommendation 2

Securities Systems must allow the option of network access on an interactive basis. They should cope with peak capacity without any service degradation, and have sufficient standby capabilities to recover operations in a reasonably short period within each processing day.

1.	How often, over the last twelve months, has the depository been required to:
	Change its published settlement timetable?	From a technical point of view the deadlines have not had to be changed at all in the recent history. Changes in timetables can also be a result of new or altered business requirements, like changes of market rules. The SECOM system is parameterised and can be adapted to such changes very flexibly.
	Extend the time of opening for settlement input by users?	Generally, the SECOM processing window is open for instruction input 24 hours with an interruption in online communication of 45 minutes per day. There are, however, settlement deadlines imposed by market rules, such as cash settlement with the Swiss National Bank. An extension of these deadlines is seldom required and generally concerns only very few and large transactions. Usually an extension is granted upon request of individual market participants and does not have a technical background in the SECOM application system. Between January 2000 and February 2001, the cash settlement deadline in Switzerland was extended on 21 occasions totally: Eight times upon request of SIS on behalf of its members, due to high volumes (queuing of DVP payment messages in the Swiss National Bank payment system - SIC), Ten times upon request of market participants, Twice because of technical problems at SIC and Once due to communication problems at Telekurs Extensions of less than 30 minutes were granted in eleven cases, and less than 60 minutes in the remaining 10 cases.
	Delay start of day processing?	SIS did not have a delay in the start of day processing over the last twelve months.
2.	Does the depository operate real time or multiple batch processing for settlement?	SIS operates a real time settlement system, which is called SECOM.
3.	Does the depository allow interactive communication (on line real time) with its users, enabling settlement input and amendment?	Users can communicate with SECOM online and real time through different interfaces. High volume users typically connect to SECOM either via their own computer-to-computer link or via off-the-shelve software solutions available from third party software vendors. Alternatively communication takes place via MAX (Maximal Access to eXtended Settlement Services) a PC-based software package developed by SIS. SiMax is a fully automated application similar to the MAX. Orders can be sent realtime from the user's in-house system to SECOM through the SiMAX interface. SECOM sends continuous status updates, which can be automatically consumed by the users' in-house systems.
4.	Has the depository ever failed to recover an outage within the day or failed to start processing runs for a whole day; and, if so, when did that failure arise and what steps have been taken to prevent a similar event in the future?	This has never happened in the history of SECOM.