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GENERAL OVERVIEW |
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| 1. |
What is ACATS? (Explanation of ACATS) |
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ACATS is an acronym for Automated Customer Account Transfer System. ACATS is a system that automates and standardizes procedures for the transfer of assets in a customer account from one brokerage firm and/or bank to another. Timely and orderly systematic transfers are the two main advantages of ACATS over manual processing.
In spite of the advantages that the system offers, ACATS was mainly created out of necessity. Prior to ACATS firms did not have much incentive to expedite the transfer of assets upon the customer's request. To address the industry's need to reduce such delays and inconsistencies |
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associated with manual processing, NSCC developed ACATS in conjunction with NYSE, its Rule 412 Task Force Committee and the NASD.
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| 2. |
How many days are involved in a typical ACATS Cycle and what are the steps involved? |
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Once initiated by the receiving firm, a typical ACATS transfer takes 6 business days to complete the ACATS cycle. Here are the steps generally taken on each of the days: |
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Day 1: |
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Deliverer receives request |
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Deliverer verifies account details |
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Deliverer accepts or rejects |
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Day 2: |
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Resolve any discrepancies |
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Day 3: |
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Deliverer Validates (settled) assets for transfer |
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Day 4 (Review1): |
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Both firms verify unsettled activity of validated assets |
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Deliverer can delete any validated assets |
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Receiver can reject entire transfer |
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Day 5 (Settle Prep): |
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Validated assets are “locked” |
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Market Value of each asset is obtained by NSCC |
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Day 6 (Settle Close): |
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Total Market Value of assets transferred from Deliverer to Receiver |
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Assets are transferred one-by-one |
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Market Value is transferred back as assets are physically delivered? |
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ON-LINE SYSTEM QUESTIONS |
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Does the on-line system allow incomplete forms to be saved prior to sending them to NSCC? |
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Yes. In addition, in the summary page, you can see which of your requests are Incomplete, Complete, Approved, Submitted and Sent and you can sort the items by status (one of many fields allowed to be sorted). |
| 2. |
If a request was changed several times with corrections and updates, will the on-line system display what was initially sent to NSCC? |
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Yes. History is maintained and displayed for each request record sent or received from NSCC. For example, for one transfer request, there may have been several input and output records communicated back-and-forth with NSCC. These historical records can be viewed in a user-friendly format initiated from the Summary screen. |
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Does the Summary page allow filtering and sorting? |
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Yes. You can filter and sort by several fields such as Date, Deliverer/Receiver type, Transfer status, Firm status, Account number, Transfer type, Days in Status, and ACATS Control Number. |
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ACATS SPECIFIC |
| 1. |
How do participants transfer Roth and Educational IRAs? (NSCC website) |
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Account types were established to identify these accounts. No special edit rules were identified for Roth and Educational IRAs. The participant needs to ensure that the appropriate account type in the transfer process is used. |
| 2. |
The deliverer has submitted assets for a FUL transfer. Can the deliverer then reject the transfer? (NSCC website) |
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Once a deliverer has submitted assets, the deliverer has no mechanism for rejecting an account transfer; however, the receiver can reject the account transfer. It is possible to communicate with the receiver outside ACATS via phone or e-mail and have the receiver reject the account. Once the delivering firm has submitted assets, the receiver can reject a Full ACATS transfer by using reject code 21 – “Violates Receiver's Credit
Policy.” |
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