- The most recent meeting of the WSE and representatives of brokerage houses – Exchange Members has taken place on 26 March 2013. The participants have confirmed the previously agreed date of migration to the WSE’s new trading platform and new/modified client systems of Exchange Members: 15 April 2013.
- The WSE has confirmed readiness to start the system on 15 April 2013.
- KNF, KDPW, KDPW_CCP and BondSpot have confirmed readiness for cooperation with the new trading system.
- As at 25 March 2013, 41 of 57[1] Exchange Members have declared readiness for migration to UTP[2]; readiness reports will be updated in the coming days.
- The WSE’s trading system version now under implementation has been available to Exchange Members since February 2012. The WSE has completed 200 test trading sessions in the new system.
The most recent meeting with representatives of brokerage houses – Exchange Members has confirmed 15 April 2013 as the first day of availability of the WSE’s new trading system and Exchange Members’ client systems. The date of 15 April 2013 was proposed by representatives of the Chamber of Brokerage Houses at the UTP project management meeting (attended by WSE managers and Exchange Member managers) on 20 November 2012 and sanctioned by a Resolution of the Exchange Management Board on the same day. The date was set on the basis of conservative assumptions compared to the date previously proposed by brokerage house representatives as March 2013.
In order to ensure maximum protection of investor interests and safety of exchange trading, the WSE and Exchange Members will continuously monitor the status of work necessary for the readiness of brokerage house systems for interaction with UTP in anticipation of the planned migration from Warset.
The WSE has announced the successful completion of the process of UTP acceptance by the Exchange on 21 February 2013. The new system has entered the phase of fine-tuning before its availability for production scheduled for 15 April 2013. Users of the new trading system, including the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF), the National Depository for Securities (KDPW), the clearing house KDPW_CCP, BondSpot and exchange data vendors, have been focusing on UTP testing for a long time now. Some brokerage houses have previously notified their readiness for UTP.
Below is a summary of the technology transition project on the Polish capital market:
- The project was initiated in October 2010.
- The WSE made UTP available in the basic version in April 2011.
- Exchange Members were granted access to the current version of UTP under implementation more than a year ago, in February 2012.
- The production version of the system was made available in May 2012. Since then, around 200 trading sessions have been completed in the system[3] using the same instruments as real-life trading in Warset.
- Of the 200 trading sessions, close to 100 included simulations of standard broker activity as well as:
- 29 IPO tests;
- 16 tender offer tests;
- 49 performance tests with a load up to 20,000 orders per second;
- 17 capacity tests with a load up to 27 million orders per session;
- 27 business continuity tests;
- 9 migration tests (simulations of migration of trading from Warset to UTP);
- 4 roll-back tests (potential roll-back from UTP to Warset).
- There have been 20 project meetings and several dozen working meetings with Exchange Members, exchange data vendors, KDPW, KDPW_CCP and IT solution providers.
- There have been 13 management meetings of the WSE and Exchange Members.
- The WSE has completed 12 workshops and training sessions for around 1,000 representatives of project participants.
The project has engaged around 100 partners whose systems need to be harmonised with UTP. Around 60 WSE employees (close to one-third of the WSE’s total headcount) from 13 WSE organisational units grouped in 6 project teams have worked on UTP implementation.
"The implementation of the new trading platform UTP is the key project in many years both on the WSE and the entire Polish capital market. The project brings about a revolution in technology. It will create conditions for significant growth of liquidity in different classes of instruments resulting in potential reductions of transaction costs, opening up opportunities of major change in trading techniques, for instance the introduction of algorithmic trading in Poland. Being aware of the fundamental benefits of UTP implementation for the Polish capital market, we should no longer defer the implementation of the system but complete it in a manner that is safe for the market," said Adam Maciejewski, CEO and President of the Warsaw Stock Exchange.
[1] There are 58 Exchange Members. One Exchange Member will connect to UTP after implementation and is not included in the readiness statistics.
[2] As at 25.03.2013 according to information from Exchange Members. Figures include only those Exchange Members that provided readiness notifications to the WSE by the relevant date. The WSE has not independently verified the received readiness reports.
[3] As at 21 March 2013.
