The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ), New Zealand’s central bank, and SIA, a payment services and infrastructures provider, have launched the new real-time financial market infrastructures, replacing the two separate platforms Exchange Settlement Account System (ESAS) and Central Securities Depository system (NZClear).

The RBNZ market infrastructures are used by 57 member organisations including banks, custodians, registries and brokers that total around 600 users from New Zealand, Australia and Asia.

Those financial institutions are now connected to a new system to manage their day-to-day interactions with RBNZ. The market infrastructures are based on the Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and Central Securities Depository (CSD) applications provided by SIA and already used by also several other central institutions across Europe, Africa, Middle East and North America.

“Every day, transactions with a value of more than $30 billion are settled, so there has been a focus on getting this right, and not rushing out a replacement until we were confident that it was ready,” said Mike Wolyncewicz, assistant governor and chief financial officer of RBNZ. “This successful changeover is the result of months of rigorous testing and we appreciate the cooperation of the system’s key users.”

“The successful go-live of this significant project with Reserve Bank of New Zealand represents another important step forward in our international presence, commented Nicola Cordone, CEO of SIA. “In particular, it is the first cornerstone in the delivery and implementation of SIA’s market infrastructure technologies in the Asia-Pacific region.”