The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has apologised for a clearing and settlement outage last year and promised to pay $1 million to affected market participants.
Managing Director and CEO Helen Lofthouse said the incident which prevented the settlement of trades was isolated to an area of the CHESS system that calculated memory allocation for settlement processes.
She said steps had been taken to prevent it reoccurring and a preliminary action plan had been developed to ensure the ongoing stability of CHESS and to identify opportunities for improvement in the ASX’s incident management protocols.
“I wanted to take this opportunity to again say I am sorry for the disruption this incident caused. While it has been successfully resolved, there are certainly lessons to be considered by ASX,” Lofthouse said in a Message to Customers.
“Not being able to provide settlement on Friday 20 December 2024 was a serious matter and does not meet the standards we know the market expects of us and which we expect of ourselves. We’re of course disappointed and are focused on ensuring it won’t happen again.
“Given the unprecedented nature of the issue and recognising the disruption it caused, we have established a $1 million credit disbursement to Settlement Participants. This will be provided in the form of a rebate, with the credit to be reflected in February invoices.”
The incident resulted in batch settlement on Friday 20 December 2024 being rescheduled to Monday 23 December, but trading and clearing services were unaffected on the day and the market opened without issue on the Monday.
The ASX said in a media release it had also released an Incident Review to help customers and stakeholders with a more detailed understanding of incident.
ASX (ASX: ASX) shares closed at $62.40, up $1.75 (2.89%), which capitalises the company at $12.1 billion.
