Tata Consultancy Services and the Australian Securities Exchange have successfully deployed Release 1 of the CHESS replacement programme — a milestone that marks one of the most significant upgrades to Australia’s financial market infrastructure in decades and demonstrates TCS’s growing footprint in critical global exchange technology.
CHESS, which stands for Clearing House Electronic Subregister System, is the backbone of Australia’s equities market — the system that facilitates the clearing and settlement of trades, transfers legal title to securities and enables delivery-versus-payment settlement between buyers and sellers. The existing system has been in operation for over three decades, and its replacement has been one of the most closely watched technology projects in Australian financial markets.
Release 1, now live, delivers the new clearing component of the replacement. TCS implemented its flagship TCS BaNCS for Market Infrastructure platform alongside its Quartz Gateway solution to power the new system. Together, they provide a cloud-hosted, high-performance central counterparty clearing solution for multiple asset classes. The system supports real-time trade novation and netting, provides connectivity to multiple Australian exchanges, and is compliant with ISO 15022, ISO 20022 and FIX messaging standards. It has been benchmarked to process more than 20 million trades per day — a significant headroom above current volumes, designed to support ASX’s future growth.
Tim Whiteley, Chief Information Officer at ASX, described the go-live as a significant milestone in the modernisation of Australia’s critical market infrastructure. He noted that TCS’s experience with markets infrastructure across other global jurisdictions enabled ASX to proceed with confidence, and confirmed that work on Release 2 — targeted for 2029 — is already underway.
R Vivekanand, President of BFSI Products and Platforms at TCS, said the platform sets a strong foundation for the future growth and development of Australian financial markets, and described TCS BaNCS and Quartz as a next-generation leader in the post-trade landscape.
The project is being delivered in two phases — a staged approach designed in consultation with industry to manage risk for infrastructure of this criticality. The successful completion of Release 1, covering clearing, sets the stage for Release 2, which will address settlement.
For TCS, the ASX deployment adds to a growing list of exchange and market infrastructure clients globally and reinforces the company’s position in a segment where long-term, mission-critical partnerships define the competitive moat. TCS has maintained a presence in Australia for over 35 years and counts most of Australia’s top ten listed companies among its clients.