Swiss banks ready for new millennium
(AP) -- Switzerland's banking regulator on Monday gave the Swiss financial sector's preparations for the change of millennium a clean bill of health.
(AP) — Switzerland’s banking regulator on Monday gave the Swiss financial sector’s preparations for the change of millennium a clean bill of health.
Some 98 percent of the country’s financial institutions have successfully completed steps to forestall problems with the so-called millennium bug, the Swiss Federal Banking Commission said in a statement.
Final tests are required in a few isolated cases, but the commission said it is confident they will be finished in the coming weeks.
“Any feeling of insecurity would therefore be unjustified,” it said.
The banks are trying to guard against disruption to computer operation on January 1, 2000, when equipment designed only to read the last two digits of a date may assume it is 1900.
They are putting in place a “central command centre interbank” in Zurich to coordinate the millennium changeover. As a precaution, Swiss banks won’t carry out transactions on December 31 and January 3.
In May, 140 Swiss banks took part in a simulation of thousands of transactions between December 29 this year and January 4, 2000 that also involved the central bank, stock exchange, clearing systems and post office. No data problems were reported.
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