Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) Commits AUD 1 Million ($630,000) Credit to Settlement Clients for Disruption of ASX Batch Settlement on 20th December 2024, ASX CEO Helen Lofthouse Sending a Personal Letter to Apologise, Error Traced to Memory Allocation Logic Introduced in 2014 for CHESS Batch Settlement
26th January 2025 | Hong Kong
Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has committed AUD 1 million ($630,000) credit to settlement clients for disruption of ASX Batch Settlement on 20th December 2024, and ASX CEO Helen Lofthouse sending a personal letter to customers to apologise. The error was traced to a memory allocation logic introduced in 2014 for CHESS Batch Settlement. ASX (23/1/25): “ASX has today released an incident review to assist customers and stakeholders with a more detailed understanding of the CHESS Batch Settlement incident that occurred on Friday 20 December 2024. This includes an overview of how the incident unfolded, root cause analysis, steps taken to prevent reoccurrence, and a preliminary action plan that ensures the ongoing stability of CHESS and identifying opportunities for improvement in our incident management protocols. The incident resulted in Batch Settlement for Friday 20 December 2024 having to be rescheduled to the following business day, Monday 23 December 2024. The root cause of the incident arose from a combination of events but is isolated to an area of CHESS that calculates memory allocation for the settlement processes. Trading and Clearing services were unaffected on Friday and the market opened without issue on the following Monday. There were specific circumstances in December 2024 that triggered the incident but the root cause can be traced back to an error that was introduced in 2014 to the memory allocation logic which resulted in the Batch Settlement process not being able to complete. The nature of this issue and how it arose was highly irregular and there is no record of previous incidents caused by this part of the system, or of CHESS not completing Batch Settlement on a designated settlement day. ASX Managing Director and CEO Helen Lofthouse sent a personal letter to customers today apologising once again for the incident and committed a $1 million credit to settlement participants in acknowledgement of the disruption. Details of this customer rebate can be found in the final section of the Incident Review. The Incident Review and the CEO letter to customers can be accessed on ASX’s website. Echoing the sentiment in her letter to customers, Ms Lofthouse said: “Not being able to complete Batch Settlement is unprecedented and we fully appreciate the seriousness of this matter. While the incident was successfully resolved such that the market could open normally on the next business day, this does not meet the high operating standards expected of ASX and which we expect of ourselves. “I wanted to write to customers directly to once again apologise for the incident and to assure them that we’ve taken steps to fix the issue and prevent reoccurrence. We’ve also outlined the current action plan that considers any further technical reviews and potential incident management protocols including how we engage stakeholders.” The release of today’s Incident Review underscores ASX’s continued commitment to transparency. We continue to update our regulatory agencies on this matter and further engagement with participants is planned as part of our post incident review actions.” More info below:
“ Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) Commits AUD 1 Million ($630,000) Credit to Settlement Clients for Disruption of ASX Batch Settlement on 20th December 2024, ASX CEO Helen Lofthouse Sending a Personal Letter to Apologise, Error Traced to Memory Allocation Logic Introduced in 2014 for CHESS Batch Settlement “
Incident – On Friday 20 December 2024 Batch Settlement could not proceed because a critical step in the settlement process generated an error that prevented completion. ASX was not able to resolve the error before the relevant cut-off time on Friday and therefore rescheduled settlement obligations to the following Business Day, Monday 23 December 2024. A single Batch Settlement occurred on 23 December 2024, including trades executed on 18 December 2024 (the trades which had been rescheduled), and trades executed on 19 December 2024 which settled in the ordinary course of the T+2 settlement cycle. The process to reschedule CHESS transactions is standard CHESS functionality, albeit usually carried out on a much smaller scale, and was completed without incident. ASX had identified a possible workaround late on Friday afternoon, however investigations over the weekend allowed ASX to identify the cause of the error in the CHESS code, and a fix was developed, tested and implemented on Sunday 22 December 2024. CHESS became available at the usual time on Monday 23 December 2024 and Batch Settlement commenced at 12:30pm, one hour later than usual (following Participant requests for an extension), successfully completing at 1:08pm the same day. Since the error only affected Batch Settlement, trading and related clearing continued as normal on Friday 20 December 2024 and the market opened without issue on Monday 23 December 2024. On Friday 20 December 2024, shortly following the commencement of Batch Settlement, ASX system monitoring detected an issue with the Batch Settlement process. Initial investigations by ASX engineers confirmed an error was preventing the process from completing and communications were issued at 12:05pm notifying users that Batch Settlement would be delayed. This information was published to the ASX System Status Page (System Status Page) and directly issued to users via email.
Background – For cash equities settlement in Australia, settlement occurs on a T+2 basis—that is, two Business Days after a trade is executed. The CHESS system facilitates the transfer of legal ownership of the cash market products and coordinates the simultaneous exchange of funds between Participants and their respective banks. CHESS employs a batch settlement process which involves the netting of all buy and sell transactions per security for each Participant for a given day. Each Business Day, Batch Settlement typically begins at 11:30am. During this process, ASX calculates each Participant’s net funding and securities delivery obligations, and the aggregated net funds positions of all participating financial institutions (payment providers). ASX then uses multilateral netting to settle both novated (i.e. market trades) and non-novated trades.
Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) Commits AUD 1 Million ($630,000) Credit to Settlement Clients for Disruption of ASX Batch Settlement on 20th December 2024, ASX CEO Helen Lofthouse Sending a Personal Letter to Apologise, Error Traced to Memory Allocation Logic Introduced in 2014 for CHESS Batch Settlement
Sign Up / Register
Caproasia Users
- Manage $20 million to $3 billion of assets
- Invest $3 million to $300 million
- Advise institutions, billionaires, UHNWs & HNWs
Caproasia Platforms | 11,000 Investors & Advisors
- Caproasia.com
- Caproasia Access
- Caproasia Events
- The Financial Centre | Find Services
- Membership
- Family Office Circle
- Professional Investor Circle
- Investor Relations Network
Monthly Roundtable & Networking
Family Office Programs
The 2025 Investment Day
- March - Hong Kong
- March - Singapore
- July - Hong Kong
- July - Singapore
- Sept- Hong Kong
- Sept - Singapore
- Oct- Hong Kong
- Nov - Singapore
- Visit: The Investment Day | Register: Click here
Caproasia Summits
- The Institutional Investor Summit
- The Investment / Alternatives Summit
- The Private Wealth Summit
- The Family Office Summit
- The CEO & Entrepreneur Summit
- The Capital Markets Summit
- The ESG / Sustainable Investment Summit
