CHESS Replacement

A secure & contemporary replacement system using global standards.
Offering a better way to deliver market efficiencies and innovation opportunities.

Building core and contemporary infrastructure to advance Australia's reputation as a leading economy

ASX is replacing CHESS, its well-functioning but ageing clearing and settlement system, with enhanced technology that will create new opportunities for the Australian market. When it goes live, the new system will offer richer functionality, adopt global standards and use contemporary technology.

It will also provide the option of accessing distributed ledger technology (DLT), which will deliver information more efficiently and stimulate competition by enabling anyone to build new services.

ASX has a history of innovating and upgrading systemically important systems. It is part of what we do. We believe this new system - sitting on new infrastructure - will create a foundation for the next decade and beyond.

Latest updates

On 26 February 2021, ASX published updates to technical documentation relating to a CDE uplift release introducing additional test tools and two new demand reports for testing. The uplift is available in CDE from 1 March 2021. Release notes providing full details can be found here.

The latest CHESS Replacement newsletter has been published for February 2021, and can be accessed here.

On 23 February 2021, ASX held the Implementation & Transition working group webinar on proposed changes to netting & settlement workflow. The webinar recording & presentation materials are available here.

On 18 February 2021, ASX released its consultation paper on CHESS Replacement: Proposed changes to netting and settlement workflow. The consultation paper outlines proposed changes to the design of both the netting and settlement confirmation workflows to deliver processing efficiencies and reduce subsequent messaging volumes as part of the overnight end-of-day process and daily batch settlement.

The proposed changes will allow the CHESS replacement system to support clearing and settlement of significantly greater trading volumes and are largely in response to the extreme record trading activity in March 2020, which redefined the Day 1 capacity requirements of the replacement system.

Written submissions in response to the consultation paper are due by 18 March 2021.

On 29 January 2021, ASX published updates to technical documentation including new content including messaging accreditation test scripts for mFunds, other minor functional changes and an update to the Forward Release Plan. Release notes providing full details can be found here.

An updated clearing and settlement system

ASX’s CHESS Replacement project will replace an existing, aged COBOL system, with a system built on Java and DAML – the Digital Asset Modelling Language – which has also been chosen by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) to standardise the OTC derivatives world.