Post-trade market infrastructure DTCC today announced that DTCC ALERT, an online global database for the maintenance and communication of account and standing settlement instructions (SSIs), has reached a key milestone with over 15 million SSIs, including three million cash SSIs, now included in the service— a 50% increase since 2021.

This growth comes at a critical time, as the U.S. moves to a T+1 settlement cycle in May 2024. Accurate, automated SSIs are key to the facilitation of accelerated settlement, as leveraging golden copy data limits discrepancies that could potentially cause failed or delayed trades.

In addition, DTCC has launched an ALERT API suite, providing market participants with an alternate way to request and receive SSI and market availability data in real time. Before the ALERT APIs, this data was traditionally accessed via web user interfaces.

DTCC’s ALERT API suite includes two APIs:

• Real Time Settlement, enabling investment managers and their outsourcers to retrieve their own specific market, security and depository SSI for a specific account in real time, as well their broker/dealers’ specific market, security and depository SSI.
• Ready to Settle, in support of client onboarding, enabling investment managers and their outsourcers to obtain a list of available market, security, depository (CSM) combinations for the investment manager account. Third parties can also pull this information on behalf of investment managers per account as well as on behalf of a broker dealers’ permissioned investment manager account.

“As the industry prepares for the implementation of the T+1 settlement cycle in the U.S., we are pleased to see growing momentum in the adoption of ALERT as firms take advantage of the benefits of leveraging automated SSI data,” said Bob Stewart, DTCC Executive Director, Institutional Trade Processing. “We are also pleased to launch the ALERT API suite, providing flexibility and a new way for users to access critical SSI data. ALERT, and its automated SSI capabilities, is a key enabler of accelerated settlement cycles and reduced trade fails, and we look forward to continuing to enhance the service to meet evolving client needs.”

For over 30 years, ALERT has brought risk mitigation and increased post-trade efficiency to its users, with 53% of SSIs within the platform managed directly by source providers, such as global custodians and prime brokers. Through ALERT’s unique workflows, custodian banks and prime brokers maintain SSIs on behalf of their clients, further automating the maintenance of timely and reliable SSIs from source providers. ALERT users may also subscribe to SSI enrichment workflows for their use of CTM, DTCC’s automated central matching platform.

Today, the ALERT service includes a global community of 3,500 organizations.