BBH First to Implement Real-Time Corporate Actions Messaging

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) and industry banking cooperative Swift have announced that New York-based private bank Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH) has gone live on their new real-time corporate actions messaging solution, launched by DTCC last year as part of a broader push to reengineer its corporate actions platform.

The BBH implementation comes after initial testing began in 2010 with reorganization announcement processing, which the firms say is both interactive and demands a high level of interpretation. The project is now expanding to replace other previously manual tasks like re-keying and exceptions processing.

The move comes as BBH, the first financial institution to pilot the service, seeks to achieve the International Organization for Standardization's (ISO’s) 20022 standard, which reduces interpretational risk and improves timeliness and accuracy of information using real-time and uniform messaging types.

The bank calls the move a critical building block in its drive to improve client experience. "The level of granularity and standardization in the new messages enhances transparency and adherence to market practice. This will give asset managers more time to make the investment decisions required for these event types," says Sonda Pimental, BBH vice president and co-chair of the International Securities Association for Institutional Trade Communication (ISITC) corporate actions working group.