The Australian Clearing House Electronic Subregister System (commonly abbreviated to CHESS) is an electronic book-entry register of holdings of approved securities that facilitates the transfer and settlement of market transactions between the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) and the ASX Settlement and Transfer Corporation Pty Limited ("ASTC", the operator of the CHESS system) and its participants.
All equity securities (on the basis of market capitalisation) are held through CHESS. Under Australian corporate law, the issuer must maintain registers for owners of securities. Australian issuers have a contractual arrangement with ASTC to maintain the CHESS subregister as agent for the issuer. The CHESS subregister is one two subregisters that together make up the issuer’s register.