Iberclear

La Sociedad de Gestión de los Sistemas de Registro, Compensación y Liquidación de Valores, S.A. Unipersonal" – which operates under the trade name of IBERCLEAR – is the Spanish Central Securities Depository (CSD).

IBERCLEAR is subject to (EU) Regulation No. 909/2014, on improving securities settlements in the European Union and on central securities depositories, and to the Royal Legislative Decree 4/2105, 23 October, by which it is approved the consolidated text of the Securities Market Act (LMV).

Under its rules, IBERCLEAR performs the following basic functions:

  • It maintains the accounting records for:
    • securities represented by book entries admitted for trading on the Public Debt Book-Entry Market;
    • securities admitted to trading on Stock Exchanges;
    • securities admitted to trading on other official secondary markets and multilateral trading facilities;
    • other securities not admitted to trading on official secondary markets, regulated markets or multilateral trading facilities.
  • It manages the settlement of securities transactions. To carry out this function, Iberclear has signed a contract with the Eurosystem to provide securities settlement services to facilitate settlement in central bank money through TARGET2-Securities. As a result of this contract, Iberclear's joined TARGET2-Securities in September of 2017.
  • It provides technical and operational services directly related to the registration and settlement of securities.
  • Additionally, it performs other related functions.

It also has agreements with the CSDs of other countries to facilitate investor access to securities issued in those CSDs.

Banco de España competence and responsibilities

Article 250 of Law 6/2023, of March 17, on Securities Markets and Investment Services, includes the competence shared with the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) to ensure the proper functioning of securities clearing, settlement and registration systems.

In carrying out its functions, Banco de España has always maintained ongoing contact with Iberclear in ensuring the proper functioning of the system. In particular, as user of the Eurosystem credit operations, Banco de España has a special interest in the settlement of fixed income securities transactions that took place in the CADE system and now are settled in Iberclear ARCO after the join of Iberclear to TARGET2-Securities.

The Eurosystem with the Banco de España direct support assess periodically the securities settlement systems (SSSs) operated by Iberclear and their links for its eligibility for the Eurosystem credit operations.

Moreover, the (EU) Regulation No. 909/2014 23 July 2014 on improving securities settlements in the European Union and on central security depositories (CSDR) includes central banks of issue in the process of authorising and supervising CSDs as a relevant authority. As the other European CSDs, in 2017 Iberclear applied for the authorisation as CSD against CSDR to the Spanish competent authority (CNMV). Banco de España support the Eurosystem as central bank of issue in this authorisation process.

Basic statistical

The link to the statistics on EU SSSs in the column of related information is included to provide an overview of Iberclear’s activity in the area of European securities market infrastructure.