Italy's SIA has won a contract with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to implement and support a new real-time gross settlement system (RTGS) that will replace the current Exchange Settlement Account System (ESAS).
The New Zealand central bank went to public tender for the new system in January 2015 after contracting with Ernst & Young to undertake a strategic review of its payments and securities settlement platforms.
The review recommended the implementation of a modern RTGS system and the sale of the NZClear security settlement and depository business which was deemed a non-core business that required significant investment.
Of the RTGS contract, deputy governor Geoff Bascand says: “Our preferred approach was to find and use an existing off-the-shelf system rather than build a new bespoke system. The contract with SIA achieves that goal.”
SIA says it will use its wholly-owned South African subsidiary Perago to deliver and support the new system.
“The Perago RTGS system has a rich list of features that we can consider for deployment," says Bascand. "We sought a system with substantial processing capacity and the Perago solution will allow for significant volume growth and high throughput rates.”
The functionality of the existing ESAS system will largely be incorporated into the replacement, including auto-overnight reverse purchase of eligible securities, tiered interest, authorisation and liquidity management features, and key interfaces to the Swift messaging system.
“After an initial planning phase, we expect to start settling on options and features in the second half of this year, with installation of the new RTGS to follow,” says Bascand.
Having failed to find a buyer for NZClear following a public tender in June of last year the Bank is currently exploring the options for a full-scale overhaul of the legacy platform.