The ICMA ERCC Operations Group was established in 2006 to address operations specific activities arising from the work of the ERCC Committee. It is composed of operations specialists from ERCC member firms, each of whom has significant practical experience to bring to the group’s work and discussions. The main mandate of the Group is to develop operational best practices and processes to improve the timeliness, completeness and efficiency of the repo product in the local, European and Global market places.
The ICMA ERCC Operations Group is currently co-chaired by Nicholas Hamilton (J.P. Morgan) and James Upton (LCH). Alexander Westphal (ICMA) is acting as Secretary of the Group.
For the more detailed Terms of Reference of the ERCC Operations Group, please click here.
Click here to access the ICMA ERCC Operations Group Members' area (login required)
(This is only available to members of this working group. If you have any enquiries or are interested in joining the group, please contact ercc@icmagroup.org)
Working Groups
In addition to its general activities, the ICMA ERCC Operations Group has established the following dedicated Working Groups:
1. Regulation: Primarily focused on SFTR and other reporting initiatives, but also covering other relevant regulations affecting repo operations, such as CSDR and MiFID II/R.
2. Market infrastructure: The ERCC Operations Group is closely involved in various regulatory and industry initiatives that aim to strengthen and harmonise market infrastructure arrangements in Europe. This includes TARGET2-Securities (T2S), the Commission’s European Post-Trade Forum (EPTF) and the ECB’s Advisory Group for market infrastructures for securities and collateral (AMI-SeCo) as well as collaborative projects with the ICSDs and other key infrastructure providers.
3. Best practice: In particular, the ongoing review of the ICMA ERCC Guide to best practice in the European Repo Market and complementary work related to specific aspects covered by the Guide such as SFT Trade Matching and Affirmation or confirmation practices and standards in the repo market.
4. FinTech: The FinTech Working Group was established in September 2016 to focus on existing and emerging technology solutions in the collateral operations space which can contribute to a more efficient and automated post-trade process. Chaired by Sanjiv Ingle (Société Générale).
Publications
- FinTech: FinTech mapping directory prepared by the ERCC Ops FinTech WG (first published on 22 November 2017, last updated November 2020)
- Market infrastructure: Response to the European Commission’s consultation on “Post-trade in a Capital Market Union: dismantling barriers and strategy for the future” (submitted on 15 November 2017).
- Regulation: ERCC response to ESMA’s consultation paper on Draft RTS and ITS under the SFTR and specific comments on the list of proposed reporting fields (submitted on 30 November 2016).
- Regulation: Regulatory overview paper (last update: 9 August 2016) on the reporting and identification of SFTs, supplemented by the Impact Analysis slides (last update: 8 February 2016).
- Regulation: ERCC response to ESMA’s discussion paper on Draft RTS and ITS under the EU SFT Regulation (submitted on 22 April 2016).
- Market infrastructure: Response to the ECB consultation on RTGS services launched as part of the Eurosystem’s vision on the future of Europe’s financial market infrastructure (submitted on 4 April 2016)
- Market infrastructure: Joint report by AFME and ICMA on the lessons learned from T2S wave 1 (published on 20 January 2016)
- Best practice: Template of recommended matching fields for repos and accompanying Glossary of terms (published on 8 December 2015)
- Regulation: ICMA ERC* Operations Group response to the Bank of England’s public consultation on A new sterling money market data collection and the reform of SONIA (published on 1 October 2015)
- Market infrastructure: Briefing note on the implication for the repo product related to the projected ‘go live’ for Monte Titoli in TARGET2-Securities (published on 10 August 2015)
- Market infrastructure: ICMA ERC*/Rule Financial webinar on TARGET2-Securities: presentation (held on 10 November 2014)
- Market infrastructure: Report on the successful migration of the European bond markets to T+2 (published on 13 October 2014)
- Market infrastructure: Report on the impact of T+2 settlement on the European bond and repo markets (last update: 16 September 2014)
