The Stock Exchange Of Thailand Develops Its IT To Serve Integrated Market Trading, Raising The Thai Capital Market’s Standards To International Level

SET Executive Vice President- IT Division, Mr. Chaiyoot Chamnanlertkit, said that the SET has formulated its IT infrastructure plan related to trading, as well as its other support systems, to better serve trading in an integrated market. The development will also raise the standards of securities trading in the Thai market.

The SET’s IT development has always been aimed at developing the potential of its IT infrastructure to better serve the expansion of the investor base, product & service development, and forge ahead to become a full-fledged integrated market.

To achieve these goals, the budget has been allocated to develop the work process for new business, like the derivatives market operated by the Thailand Futures Exchange Pcl. (TFEX), which has Sweden’s OMX Technology, the world’s leading system developer for derivatives, as its development partner.

“We expect all the systems will be operational and ready for the first product—the SET50 Index Futures-- by the end of 2005,” the SET EVP said.

He continued, “As for the current work systems, the focus is on capacity enhancement to cope with the higher number of transactions. Meanwhile, we will continue to develop the trading system for equity instruments on both the SET and the mai to expand the order-matching system’s capacity and improve its back-up system.

“As for infrastructure development, the division has been developing its infrastructure for bond trading, which is set for completion by July 2005. Once completed, the system will be able to cope with both corporate and government bond transactions. It will efficiently accommodate a higher number of listed bonds as well as the expected increased trading activities of retail and institutional investors.

“As for the TSD’s clearing & settlement system, we anticipate that it will be able to efficiently undertake all its clearing & settlement duties for equity, debt, and derivative instruments by the end of 2005 as well.

“As for the information dissemination system, the service will be extended to better serve the trading of all types of products. The network will be changed from a one-way to a two-way communication system by utilizing TCP/IP protocols similar to the Internet. This will enable us to enlarge the bandwidth as far as the country’s network infrastructure permits, and will provide more communication channels between the SET and its listed companies. Also, the messages sent through this channel will be sender-identified, making it more reliable and able to be effectively applied to other purposes. The information fed through this channel will be both correct and complete. This development will lead to faster and timelier dissemination. The project will be completed by the middle of 2005.

“Once all the ongoing projects have been completed, the Thai capital market will have the potential to serve the transactions of all products. When we have an IT infrastructure capable of coping with all the transactions of an integrated market plus have stable & reliable trading and support systems, our standards of trading services will be able to achieve international standards,” the SET EVP ended.