Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEx) announced today (Friday) that the stabilisation period for its derivatives trading and clearing systems, Hong Kong Futures Automatic Trading System (HKATS) and Derivatives Clearing and Settlement System (DCASS), has been completed.

The two-week stabilisation period, which began when both HKATS and DCASS were upgraded with Release 19.1 software on 3 March, was a prudent measure to ensure that HKEx, Exchange Participants and Clearing Participants were prepared in the unlikely event that fallback arrangements had to be triggered after the upgrade.  Both HKATS and DCASS have been operating smoothly with satisfactory system performance so no fallback arrangements were required during the stabilisation period.

As a result of the software upgrade, HKATS and DCASS have new functional and technical features, such as block trade execution of strategy trades and improved access control functions.  In addition, the upgrade enables HKEx to align HKATS and DCASS with the OMX’s support roadmap to secure quality support from the vendor, thereby safeguarding the reliability and stability of these mission critical applications at HKEx.