First-response guide for position integrity incidents: depot reconciliation breaks, statement loading problems, transaction and cash reconciliation, realignments and aged breaks.
- The stock record is the bank's book of record for securities positions, kept per safekeeping (depot) account and ISIN, with two views: traded (trade date) and settled (settlement date).
- Every settlement confirmation (MT544-547), corporate action movement and realignment posts to the stock record. If a screen shows a "wrong" position, first establish which view the user is looking at — half of reported integrity incidents are a traded vs settled misunderstanding.
- Overnight, custodian and CSD statements are loaded: MT535 (positions) and MT536 (transactions).
- Depot reconciliation compares GLOSS settled positions against MT535, per depot account and ISIN.
- Transaction reconciliation matches GLOSS movements against MT536 entries using the matching rules (reference, ISIN, quantity, value date, tolerances).
- Unmatched items create breaks; breaks age daily until cleared and feed the morning breaks report.
- Timing break or real break? Check for confirmations received after the statement cut-off; a movement settled late yesterday matches off naturally today. Do not chase timing breaks before one full cycle.
- Statement missing or partial: check the statement loader — expected vs received statements per custodian. A missing page produces a burst of one-sided breaks on a single account.
- Quantity break on one ISIN: look for a pending corporate action adjustment (split, attribution) applied by the custodian but not yet in GLOSS, or the reverse.
- Break after a realignment: verify both legs — the delivery on the source depot and the receipt on the target depot. A missing receipt leaves the position "in transit".
- Many accounts, same custodian: suspect a statement format change on their side; escalate to the custodian relationship contact with samples.
- Check the inbound queue for the statement file: naming convention, business date, duplicate detection.
- A file rejected for format goes to the quarantine folder; never edit the file manually — request a resend from the custodian.
- After loading a late statement, rerun the depot reconciliation for that account only, not the full pass.
- Any break older than 5 business days needs a named owner and a comment in the break record.
- Breaks older than 30 days are reported to management and to the auditors; document the investigation trail in the ticket.
- Never adjust the stock record to "make the reconciliation green" — fix the source (missing confirmation, unbooked movement, wrong statement).
- One break, one root cause: bulk write-offs are prohibited without L2 approval.
- After any manual movement, rerun the reconciliation on the affected account the same day.
Position integrity doubt on a client account (books ahead of depot) → L2 and the settlements manager the same day. Statement not received two days in a row → custodian relationship contact. Suspected GLOSS defect (movement posted twice, view inconsistency) → SS&C case with the movement extract.