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Financial market infrastructure

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brussels head office of Euroclear, a major international financial market infrastructure

Financial market infrastructure refers to systems and entities involved in clearing, settlement, and the recording of payments, securities, derivatives, and other financial transactions.[1] Depending on context, financial market infrastructure may refer to the category in general, or to individual companies or entities (thus also used in plural: financial market infrastructures).

Examples

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Examples of financial market infrastructure firms include payment systems, securities settlement systems, central counterparties, central securities depositories, and trade repositories.[1][non-primary source needed]

Some financial infrastructures have a global reach, such as financial messaging service SWIFT, foreign-exchange settlement service provider CLS Group, and international central securities depositories Euroclear and Clearstream.[2]

Other major commercial financial infrastructure firms include:

Financial trading venues such as stock exchanges, futures exchanges, commodities exchanges and electronic trading platforms, are not always considered financial market infrastructures where they are subject to competition, but are included in the definition of financial market infrastructures in certain jurisdictions such as Switzerland.[6] Many exchanges are subsidiaries of financial infrastructure groups such as CME Group, Deutsche Börse, Euronext, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, Intercontinental Exchange, Japan Exchange Group, London Stock Exchange Group, Nasdaq, Inc., Singapore Exchange, and SIX Swiss Exchange.

Some financial infrastructures, including many payment systems, are directly operated by central banks. These include a number of Real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems such as the High-Value Payment System in China, T2 in the euro area, CHAPS in the United Kingdom, and Fedwire in the U.S. Other central bank-operated infrastructures include the China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS) in China,[7] or TARGET2-Securities in the euro area and beyond.

Regulation and monitoring

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Financial market infrastructures, many of which are natural monopolies, are typically of critical systemic importance and thus subject to intrusive regulation and monitoring.

At the global level, the applicable standards are the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures (PFMI), first issued in April 2012 jointly by the Committee on Payments and Settlement Systems (CPSS, renamed in 2014 as Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures - CPMI) and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO).[8] These brought together standards that had previously been issued separately for systemically important payment systems (CPSS, January 2001), securities settlement systems (CPSS & IOSCO, November 2001), and central counterparties (CPSS & IOSCO, November 2004).[9]: 306 

The related semantics sometimes distinguishes between supervision, typically by prudential authorities and securities commissions, and oversight by central banks, even though in practice that distinction has eroded over the years.[9]: 316  For example, international cooperative oversight frameworks exist for SWIFT (led by the National Bank of Belgium) and CLS (led by the U.S. Federal Reserve). The Eurosystem oversight framework, led by the European Central Bank, associates National Central Banks to the oversight of TARGET Services, EURO1 and STEP2-T.[9]: 321 

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ a b "Supervision & Oversight of Financial Market Infrastructures". Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
  2. ^ "What is a CSD?". European Central Securities Depositories Association ECSDA.
  3. ^ "Brief Introduction of CCDC and Its Shanghai Branch". Shanghai Municipal People's Government. 18 July 2023.
  4. ^ "Brief Introduction of Shanghai Clearing House". Shanghai Municipal People's Government. 18 July 2023.
  5. ^ "What is China's Swift equivalent and what are its origins?". South China Morning Post. 2022-02-28. Retrieved 2022-03-03.
  6. ^ "Financial market infrastructures and foreign market participants". FINMA.
  7. ^ "Brief Introduction of China Foreign Exchange Trade System". Shanghai Municipal People's Government. 18 July 2023.
  8. ^ "Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures (PFMI)". Bank for International Settlements. September 2014.
  9. ^ a b c Payments and market infrastructures in the digital era (PDF), Banque de France, 2018