Priorities

Current Priorities:

Shortening Canada’s Standard Settlement Cycle to T+1:
The CCMA Board has approved an initiative to support the industry as it moves, with the U.S., to shorten their common settlement cycle for equities, and most debt and mutual funds, from the current North-American standard of T+2 to T+1 – the day after a trade is made. Given Canada’s and the U.S.’s highly inter-related capital markets, the CCMA led national industry-wide efforts to reduce the settlement cycle from T+5 to T+3 in 1995, and from T+3 to T+2 in 2017, on the same day as the U.S.
[On hold pending completion of T+1 Project] TMX/CDS Post-Trade Modernization Project:
The CCMA Board has approved an initiative to support the industry in working with CDS to modernize its clearing and settlement systems, as well as its entitlement and corporate action systems.

Future Priorities

The CCMA will continue to investigate and support initiatives that are important to the Canadian investment industry. The CCMA Board approves all new initiatives to be undertaken by the association, in consultation with the overall industry.

Past Priorities

Between 2015 and 2017, CCMA led the financial industry’s transition to a T+2 settlement environment. The move to settle trades more quickly was designed to reduce margin and liquidity needs during times of economic volatility and lessen credit and counterparty exposure. This transition was successfully completed on September 5, 2017. In April 2018, the CCMA published Transition to T+2 – Post-Mortem Report, which looked at what went well, lessons learned, and impediments to further shortening the settlement period.
In 2007, CCMA efforts focused on whether to extend daylight saving time (DST) by five weeks with the United States.
From 1999 to 2004, the CCMA’s priority was to facilitate the Canadian securities industry’s overall preparedness to implement straight-through-processing (STP) strategies while promoting efficient and timely trade-date matching among capital market participants.