TARGET2-Securities Annual Report

26 April 2021

The ECB has published the tenth edition of the TARGET2‑Securities Annual Report, covering the third full year after the end of the T2S migration period.

T2S connects 21 central securities depositories (CSDs) from 20 European markets and processes on average almost 700,000 securities transactions per day against both euro and Danish krone. The report presents the evolution of the platform’s settlement data, financial performance and system development, as well as its risk management and compliance structure.

Some key figures from the report: in 2020 T2S settled 176,681,247 transactions, with a total value of €172.84 trillion. Compared with the previous year, there was a decrease of 38.72% in terms of value, mainly because of the newly applied statistical framework which, for instance, excludes liquidity transfers. At the same time, there was an increase of 14.16% in terms of volume, mainly driven by a higher traffic of settlement instructions during the first months of the COVID‑19 pandemic.

Over the year the T2S platform experienced 21 major incidents, described as unplanned interruptions or reductions in the quality of the service. Each of the incidents was followed up with a detailed report, serving as input for continuously improving the service and for reinforcing capabilities for preventing or mitigating such incidents in future.

T2S is the Eurosystem’s settlement platform for securities transactions. It provides harmonised and commoditised securities settlement to CSDs and applies a single set of rules, standards and tariffs to all participating CSDs.