The SecuritEase AMO Gateway powering critical financial market infrastructure
On Monday 20 April 2026, the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) cut over to Release 1 of its new CHESS system — and SecuritEase was there, quietly keeping markets operating for our customers.
Release 1 is modest in functional payload but profound in what it delivers: central counterparty clearing, the function through which ASX assumes the credit risk on both sides of every equities trade. It also brings two firsts for ASX - the new TCS BaNCS platform and a move to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the first time any ASX software has run on the public cloud. As the Australian Financial Review reported, the new system can process 21 million trades a day (up from around 7 million on the old system, lifted to ~14 million during the pandemic), registers and therefore clears trades at three times the speed of its predecessor, and is designed to flip between AWS data centres in Sydney and Melbourne for resiliency. It also replaces CHESS's proprietary 1990s messaging with standardised ISO 20022 messages - reducing integration cost for brokers and investment banks.
What we did
Our team designed, developed, and tested enhancements to the SecuritEase AMO Gateway, which connects Approved Market Operators (AMOs) via ASX’s Trade Acceptance Service (TAS) to the new CHESS. We then supported our AMO licensees — the National Stock Exchange of Australia (NSX) and the Sydney Stock Exchange (SSX) - right through the cutover weekend and the hypercare phase that followed.
The result: both exchanges were connected and operating from market open with no disruption to participants or investors, on a day the market was already processing higher-than-usual volumes amid global volatility.
Thank you to the team
This was a true team effort. I'd like to acknowledge the SecuritEase team - in particular, our Australian engineering group for their customer-centric approach, meticulous preparation, and commitment through an intense release window. It's the kind of work that doesn't make headlines when it goes right, and that's precisely the point.
What's next
CHESS Release 1 handles trade registration and clearing. Release 2, covering settlement, the sub-register and the move toward T+1, is the larger milestone for the Australian market and is scheduled for 2029. Ahead of that, ASX plans to migrate derivatives-market clearing onto the same AWS platform next year. We're already engaged on the work to support our ASX participant licensees through the remainder of these projects and beyond.
Cliff Richards Managing Director, Australia — SecuritEase International Limited