ECB to conduct independent review of payments system outage

The European Central Bank (ECB) will launch an independent review of an incident that affected its real-time gross settlement system TARGET2 on 23 October 2020.

The incident, caused by a software defect in a network device, has determined an outage for almost 10 hours. The independent review will also take into account other incidents that affected TARGET Services during 2020, including those affecting directly and indirectly TARGET2 Securities (T2S), the securities settlement platform operated by the Eurosystem.

As a result, Eurosystem plans to look into the robustness of the business continuity model, the adequacy of the regular recovery tests, the efficiency of the change management procedures, and the communication protocols, to draw lessons from the incidents and address them.

The main findings of the review will be shared with market participants and made public by the second quarter of 2021.

TARGET2 is the leading European platform for processing large-value payments. It is owned and operated by the Eurosystem, which comprises the ECB and the 19 national central banks of the euro area. Central banks and commercial banks can submit payment orders in euro to TARGET2, where they are processed and settled in central bank money, i.e. money held in an account with a central bank. TARGET2 settles payments related to the Eurosystem’s monetary policy operations, as well as bank-to-bank and commercial transactions.

T2S is a platform managed by the Eurosystem that offers harmonised and centralised settlement of securities in central bank money. Currently 20 countries across Europe use T2S.