Best Practices & Standards

Institutional Trade Processing Best Practices and Standards

January 18, 2007

There is strong agreement that the Canadian securities industry needs cross-industry best practices and standards governing the lifecycle of a transaction through investment managers, broker/dealers, custodians, service bureaus, transfer agents, depositories and more. Adoption of Best Practices and Standards by industry participants is key to maintaining the competitiveness of Canadian capital markets while working to reduce operational costs and risks at the same time as improving customer service. In 2003, the CCMA published putative Best Practices for Institutional Trade Processing, Entitlements and Security Lending to establish goals for operational practices in these areas. Since then, the CCMA has continued to work towards the achievement of same-day trade matching focussed particularly on Institutional Trades recognizing this to be an area of competitive weakness vis-a-vis the U.S. market. Institutional Trade Matching Best Practices have been updated to reflect current agreement among industry participants and will continue to evolve to reflect available functionality and business practices. We have organized Best Practices and Standards under the following headings:

• General Principles – guidelines to follow when developing ITM related processes and procedures
• Standard Data Elements – trade related information expected to be provided at each step in the trade flow process
• Practices and Procedures – who does what when
• Key Performance Measures – key measures and benchmarks employed in the industry