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 3 August, ASX hosted and Implementation and Transition webinar. The Q&A, presentation materials & recording are available here.

On 3 August, ASX issued a CHESS Replacement project update to the market confirming a delay to the project schedule and the commissioning of Accenture to provide an independent review of the new CHESS application software. The review will identify necessary actions for ASX to communicate a revised timetable to finish the project and help determine a go-live date with confidence. Based on the current information, we do not expect that the go-live date for CHESS replacement could be before late 2024. The full project update is available here.

On 1 August, released code drop 3 (referred to as v1.3) to the Industry Test Environment (ITE1) to support the software provider readiness phase of industry testing. This release includes the release candidate for initial accreditation phase, re-instates change of controlling participant and class mergers, CHESS UI new screens for payment providers, VMware ledger upgrade (1.5) – including ledger API error codes, new AMO functionality for password change, corporate actions enabled for testing; and new ITE1 tools plus other updates. Release notes providing full details can be found here.

On 29 July, ASX published updates to technical documentation including new documentation for software provider accreditation, ITE test tool updates, CHESS user ITE2 onboarding page updates, operational readiness, cutover & and general documentation amendments. Release notes providing full details can be found here .

On 27 July, ASX hosted a Software Provider Readiness working group. The Q&A and presentation materials are available here.

On 20 July, ASX published an information paper setting out the considerations and assessment by ASX to cutover from current CHESS to the CHESS replacement system, and to global standard message sets (including ISO 20022 and FIX, both from CHESS proprietary format message) using a risk-mitigated single cutover approach.

On 13 July, ASX published the second independent expert report on the assessment of ASX’s Assurance Program for the implementation of the CHESS Replacement Program providing an update on the status of the remedial actions.

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.