National Settlement Depository (NSD), Russia’s central securities depository, announces the launch of the “One Stop Shop” technological agency scheme to disclose corporate information. The agency scheme has been developed by NSD with the support of the Bank of Russia, and in conjunction with leading Russian and foreign record keeping institutions. The scheme will implement the “One Stop Shop” principle with regard to information disclosure in the Russian market in accordance with the Bank of Russia’s Regulations №454-P and №546-P; it assumes the creation of services for receiving, structuring, and distributing corporate data via agencies authorized to disclose information by the Bank of Russia.
Agencies will be able to join NSD’s new service on a voluntary basis; issuers will also voluntarily use the “One Stop Shop” scheme. This scheme will not affect current methods of disclosing information about corporate actions. However, the agencies which choose to join NSD’s Corporate Information Center (CIC) will have to take responsibility to meet NSD’s technological requirements, in particular, to transmit data via protected channels in accordance with the ISO 20022 format and with the use of the Moscow Exchange’s EDI system.
To ensure that the new channel offers the maximum level of protection for distributing structured corporate information, the agency scheme calls for a double validation when the agency drafts a message at the issuer’s request. The issuer sends the required information to draft the message to the agency’s server; the agency then structures the data and sends the structured message to the issuer for approval. After that, the issuer checks if the message is correct, signs it with its electronic digital signature, and sends it back for publishing and transferring to the CSD.
Eddie Astanin, Chairman of the Executive Board, NSD, said: “The large scale corporate actions reform in Russia, in which NSD played a critical role, requires new convenient and modern services to exchange structured information. We believe that the One Stop Shop scheme developed by NSD, in conjunction with market participants and the Bank of Russia, will reduce issuers’ expenses related to information disclosure and drafting structured messages. As a result, it will improve the information services provided to all participants in the investment process (record keeping institutions, holders of Russian issuers’ securities, and a wide circle of potential global investors) to a completely new level.”
According to the road map for implementing the One Stop Shop for Information Disclosure scheme, work on developing the technological platform to connect agencies to NSD’s CIC should be completed in late 2017 or early 2018.