With the introduction of ECMS on 18 November, 2024, the management of eligible collateral for Eurosystem monetary policy credit operations will be integrated on a single and central technical platform. In order to ensure a smooth migration from the Collateral Management Systems currently used to the ECMS, extensive testing and migration preparations are required.

Test and Migration planning in the Eurosystem

The test and migration preparation for the ECMS is in the responsibility of an internal Eurosystem working group in which, in addition to the ECB and the 4CBs, the central banks participating in the ECMS common platform are also represented. This working group develops the plans necessary for the test and migration phase as well as detailed plans for the "pre-migration phase" and the migration weekend itself. 

A central document in this respect is the "Strategy for ECMS Migration and Testing". In addition to general information on migration and testing principles that must be observed, this basic document describes the testing and migration phases as well as the roles and responsibilities that future ECMS users such as central banks, CSDs/TPAs and monetary policy counterparties will assume during testing and migration. In this context, dependencies of the ECMS users have to be taken into account. The document also lists how ECMS users can verify that their internal systems are adapted to the ECMS. This is the only way to carry out the necessary migration tests. It also contains information on communication between ECMS users to ensure good and efficient coordination of testing and migration execution during the testing and migration period. 

Central role of the national central banks

The national central banks closely accompany the participants in the test and migration preparation, the actual test execution as well as during the migration. The direct contact for the German user community is the Deutsche Bundesbank.

Documents prepared by the Eurosystem and relevant for our monetary policy counterparties for the test and migration phase are available on this page. The forms required for participation in the ECMS will also be made available here.

Information on user testing and migration testing will be sent separately to the Bundesbank's monetary policy counterparties.

Migration activities

In preparation for the start of production of ECMS on 18 November, 2024, migration activities are to be carried out by various stakeholders. The counterparties will be involved in the preparation, while the migration itself will be carried out by the Deutsche Bundesbank.

The setup of the production environment of ECMS will start with the so-called "Connectivity Set-up and Execution" from September 4, 2023. During this phase, the first reference data of the Deutsche Bundesbank's counterparties will be created in ECMS and connection tests will be performed. The migration of the data will be carried out by the Deutsche Bundesbank. A prerequisite for this is the sending of a registration form for the production environment by the counterparties. 

After successful completion of the Connectivity Set-up and Execution phase, the next migration phase, Pre-Migration, will begin, during which the remaining reference data will be migrated to ECMS.

Information for the functional customer testing

Monetary policy counterparties conduct functional tests. For this reason, the Deutsche Bundesbank has prepared and published accompanying material on the relevant test cases. The documents listed are updated on a regular basis.