The SDC represented by Mr. Ala’ Malhas/ Research Department and Mrs. Faten Abdalhafiz/ Members and Securities Department, participated in the 23th meeting of AMEDA, which was held in Tangier-Morocco on 04-06/05/2016. The meeting was attended by more than 50 participants from securities depository centers and stock exchanges in the AMEDA, experts and senior officials from relevant institutions.

During the meeting, the participating members approved the minutes of the 22nd meeting and the financial statements for the year 2015. Also, they accepted the membership of Damascus Stock Exchange as a full member and the National Bank of Egypt as an associate member.

Many several presentations, covered by the agenda, were displayed over the two days of the meeting, including the findings of benchmarking project. This statistical study, undertaken by Thomas Murray on behalf of AMEDA, helps AMEDA to profile and understand its members by shedding lights on fundamental aspects of members which are basic information (legal nature, ownership structure), financials, securities coverage, market participants, communications and IT, corporate structure, and core services, and a presentation about the technology that created a tool that would be helpful to AMEDA members in responding to the CPSS IOSCO (Disclosure framework for financial market infrastructures and Assessment methodology for the principles for FMIs) and AGC questionnaires, additionally, the CSD of South Africa presented its experience of taking stakeholders' education online. Also, each member presented the key projects that are top of strategic concern. In this session, the SDC presented its major future project which is developing the securities settlement cycle by allowing the custodians to settle the trading contracts related to their clients directly through the SDC on a DvP basis

The AMEDA Chairman, Mr. Mohammad Abdel Salam, invited the members to attend the next meeting that will be held in Sharm ElSheikh in November, 2016. This meeting is for training members on several topics such as cross border clearing and settlement, technology risks such disaster recovery and business continuity, and collateral management.

The major recommendations and decisions resulted from the meeting: approving Abu Dhabi meeting decisions, approving to upload the AMEDA benchmarking project findings and the events calendar to AMEDA website, approving AMEDA 2015 financials, training members on disaster recovery and business continuity, cyber security, recovery and resolutions regimes, cross border clearing and settlement, collateral management, analytics and data surveillance during the training that will be held in Sharm ElSheikh, and accepting the membership of Damascus Stock Exchange as a full member.

At the end, it was determined that the next AMEDA General Assembly meeting will be hosted by Central Securities Clearing System of Nigeria in 2017.