SGX has completely transformed the corporate announcement processing and reporting methodology for all listed companies, with the objective of establishing direct and efficient channels of communications from issuer to investor.
This transformation required an overhaul and replacement of the existing technology infrastructure and its associated, often manual, processes, applying ISO 20022 standards to the corporate actions data at the point of issuer submission in partnership with SWIFT, to capture the corporate actions data in a structured and machine-readable format, eliminating the need for further interpretation and translation; implementing state-of-the-art technology.
Trading Places, Herbie Skeete: What was the driver for this change to the service?
Mrs Tinku Gupta, Senior Vice President, Head Market Data & Access, Singapore Exchange: The submissions portal has driven a high degree of cost and process efficiency via automation and straight-through processing (STP), improving the transparency, accuracy and speed of delivery of corporate event data.
TP: Who will be impacted by the new service?
Mrs Gupta: This initiative will impact all participants of the Singapore market including the Listed Companies, Issuers, Custodians, Depository Agents, Data and News Vendors, Investors.
TP: What services are available?
Mrs Gupta: There are essentially two services.
An XML feed that encompasses all the company announcements including product announcements and listings, regulatory announcements, material disclosures and intra-day trading halts in ISO 20022 standard for ISO messages and SGX proprietary XML standards for the rest, including corporate actions that cater predominantly to the vendor community and downstream to traders and other market participants.
The ISO 15022 standard Corporate Actions feed is distributed exclusively via the SWIFT gateway for participants (such as custodians and wealth managers) on this network.
TP: What has been the response thus far to the new service?
Mrs Gupta: We worked very closely with the Securities Markets Practice Group, an organisation that defines global and local market practices for the securities industry, to define the structure of the messages to drive as much straight-through-processing as possible. The exchange also spent six months training issuers on how to enter data into the new ISO-based template. The feedback so far has been positive as the benefits are apparent. We have seen the quality of submissions during the training process improve and this has continued since the service went live on 24 March. For example during the initial days after the launch, the accuracy for corporate announcements was only at 38%. This improved to 71% accuracy within two weeks as we continue to observe a greater adoption of announcement-specific templates as opposed to using a one-size-fits-all general template. Given the level of changes this new service entails, issuer education is and will be an ongoing process. We are confident levels of accuracy will continue to improve over the next few months.
TP: How many announcements per day on average?
Mrs Gupta: We have about 200 announcements per day.
TP: Is there any authentication to ensure the news entries are being made by authorised personnel?
Mrs Gupta: The system incorporates two factor authentications to ensure that only authorised personnel can access the system.
TP: Will the SGX be enhancing this service to provide an algo news feed?
Mrs Gupta: Our immediate focus is to get the current system fully bedded in with all announcements submitted and structured correctly. Thereafter, we will look at other enhancements based on customers’ needs.