Financial messaging network Swift will next month institute a proof of concept for an industry-approved Testing and Certification Service for corporate actions.
The exercise will involve 12 organisations representing financial institutions, custodians and sub custodians and vendors. So far, corporate actions software vendor Xcitek is the only participant to publicly disclose its involvement.
The Securities Market Practice Group (SMPG) - an industry group focused on defining, enhancing, harmonising and documenting securities industry communication practices using ISO 15022 principles - has given its backing to the tests.
The objectives of this programme are to successfully test for SMPG-compliant usage of corporate actions messages using an automated process; and to gauge support for future testing/certification and collect participant feedback.
Research released by consultancy Oxera earlier this year demonstrated that even routine corporate actions events can have a significant impact on share prices and trading activity.