ASX admits CHESS tech staff 'stretched'

The ASX has completed a resourcing and capability review for CHESS, after an outage occurred in late December 2024 which saw a "technical issue" on the CHESS Batch Settlement that disrupted and delayed several days' trade settlements.

This outage was the final straw in several delays and issues with the CHESS replacement which has caused regulators to call for change.

Now, the ASX has revealed several key findings from the review, which has been submitted to the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC).

The review found that while there are sufficient resources to support the ongoing maintenance and day-to-day operation of CHESS, there is a growing workload on operational and technology teams to support increasing levels of demand following the settlement incident, including post-incident work and the related regulatory actions.

The review concluded that while the overall size of the CHESS technical support teams are sufficient for the business-as-usual operational demands of CHESS and build and change activities, the relevant teams are "stretched in the event of a multi-day incident".

"To address the findings, the ASX has committed to a series of actions that will form part of its plan to further strengthen its resourcing arrangements for the maintenance and support of CHESS," the ASX said.

The ASX said it plans to expand the current internal capacity of CHESS to support increased post-incident workload.

"This includes identifying resources required to alleviate the demand on engineering team members faced with increased non-technical tasks, thus creating additional bandwidth for the engineers," it said.

Additionally, it plans to extend existing third-party support arrangements to aid the current increased workload and any future capacity requirements.

"This is to ensure timely access to suitable technology resources and skills which is an important part of current CHESS workforce planning particularly during times of peak workloads or during incidents," it said.

Lastly, the ASX said it is committed to improving the ways of working to support multi-day incidents, including round-the-clock incident resolution teams when managing times of incidents or abnormally high workloads.

The ASX said it would further review the current CHESS resourcing following the delivery of new CHESS Release 1.

The new CHESS system will be implemented in two stages with Release 1 - the delivery of clearing services - targeted for March or April 2026.

Release 2 - the delivery of the subregister and settlement services - is targeted for 2029.