Arbitration under the SCC rules: step by step runs through five sequential stages: filing a Request for Arbitration, constituting the tribunal, exchanging written submissions, taking evidence at a hearing, and receiving a final award enforceable under the New York Convention. Each stage carries its own deadline and its own set of required documents.
Who this concerns
This procedure matters to any party bound by an arbitration clause naming the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (in Swedish, Stockholms Handelskammares Skiljedomsinstitut, commonly referred to as the SCC), whether as claimant preparing to file or as respondent that has just received a Request for Arbitration. It matters equally to in-house counsel assessing exposure before a dispute is filed, because several of the choices that shape cost and duration, number of arbitrators, seat, language, are made at the drafting stage and are difficult to unwind once a case is registered.
Cross-border commercial contracts add a layer that purely domestic ones do not have. When the counterparty, its assets, or its parent company sit outside Sweden, service of the Request has to reach a party abroad, submissions may need translation, and the resulting award has to be enforced in a jurisdiction that did not participate in drafting the clause. Each of these points is dealt with later in this material; they do not change the sequence of the procedure, but they change how long each step realistically takes and what has to be prepared in advance.
What the law says
The procedure itself is set by the SCC Rules currently in force, which the parties adopt by reference when their contract names the Institute as administering body. The Rules govern the mechanics: how a case is registered, how the tribunal is appointed, what the written phase looks like, and how the award is rendered and corrected.
Alongside the Rules, the arbitration law of the seat supplies the provisions that the parties cannot contract out of, chiefly the right of each party to present its case, the grounds on which an award can be challenged, and the role of the courts at the seat in supporting or reviewing the process. Where the seat is Sweden, this background law applies under Swedish law as it currently stands regardless of what the parties' contract says on the point; where the seat is elsewhere, the equivalent local law performs the same function. The distinction between the institutional Rules and the mandatory law of the seat is the first thing to get right, because a clause can validly displace the former but not the latter.
How it works in practice
Filing the Request for Arbitration
The claimant starts the case by submitting a Request to the Institute, not to the tribunal, because at this point no tribunal exists yet. The Request has to identify the parties, set out the arbitration agreement relied on, describe the dispute and the relief sought, and attach the contract containing the clause. The Institute checks the Request administratively, confirms that a case has been registered, and notifies the respondent.
Constituting the tribunal
The number of arbitrators, one or three, follows what the clause specifies; if the clause is silent, the Institute decides based on the complexity and amount in dispute. With a three-member tribunal, each party nominates one arbitrator and the two nominees, or failing agreement the Institute, appoint the chair. With a sole arbitrator, the parties are asked to agree on a candidate before the Institute appoints one directly. Any nominee has to disclose circumstances that could affect impartiality; a challenge to an arbitrator is decided by the Institute, not by the tribunal itself.
The Answer and any counterclaim
The respondent's Answer addresses the claims made in the Request and states whether it accepts or contests the tribunal's jurisdiction. A counterclaim, if there is one, is raised at this stage rather than introduced later, because the Rules treat late counterclaims as a matter for the tribunal's discretion rather than a right.
Case management and the procedural timetable
Once constituted, the tribunal holds an early case management conference to set the timetable: rounds of written submissions, any period for document production, and a hearing date. This timetable is the document that governs the case from that point forward; deviations from it require the tribunal's consent and are not automatic.
Document production and evidence
Where document production is ordered, requests are typically narrow and tied to specific issues rather than open categories, reflecting practice that treats broad discovery as the exception rather than the norm. Witness statements and expert reports, where relevant, are exchanged on the timetable set by the tribunal, not filed unilaterally.
The hearing
Most cases proceed to an oral hearing where witnesses and experts are examined, although the Rules allow the tribunal to decide the dispute on documents alone if the parties agree or if a hearing would not assist. The hearing can take place away from the seat for practical reasons; the seat determines the legal home of the award, not the physical location of any hearing.
The award and post-award steps
The tribunal issues a final award, or partial and separate awards on distinct issues where the case allows it. The Institute reviews the draft for form before it is issued to the parties. A limited correction procedure exists for clerical or computational errors; it does not reopen the merits.
What to check before filing
- The exact wording of the arbitration clause: seat, number of arbitrators, language, and any scope carve-outs.
- Whether the clause covers the specific claim, including any related tort or restitution claims arising from the same relationship.
- Whether a multi-tier clause requires negotiation or mediation before arbitration can be commenced.
- The corporate identity of the counterparty named in the clause against the entity actually in breach.
- Whether interim relief is needed before the tribunal is even constituted, and from which court.
- Where the counterparty's assets sit, because that, not the seat, determines where the award will eventually need to be enforced.
Frequently asked questions
How long does arbitration under the SCC Rules typically take?
Duration depends on the number of arbitrators, whether document production is ordered, and how cooperative the parties are with the timetable set at the case management conference. A case with a sole arbitrator and no document production runs on a materially shorter track than a three-member tribunal case with contested evidentiary requests, and the Institute does not publish a fixed target that applies to every case.
Can a party start court proceedings instead if there is an SCC clause?
A valid arbitration clause displaces the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts for the claims it covers, and a court asked to rule on such a claim will normally decline in favour of arbitration once the clause is raised as a defence. The exception is interim relief, which courts at the seat or elsewhere can still grant in parallel while the tribunal is being constituted.
What happens if the other party refuses to pay its share of the advance on costs?
The Institute can require the other party to cover the missing share so the case proceeds, and that amount is later recovered as part of the costs award if the paying party succeeds. A persistent refusal to fund a defence is one of the few situations where the case moves forward on one party's payments alone.
The numbers
The Rules set an administrative fee and an advance on costs calculated by reference to the amount in dispute; the tribunal's own fees sit within that advance and scale with the same variable, plus the number of arbitrators. A three-member tribunal costs materially more than a sole arbitrator for a comparable claim, which is one reason clauses drafted for lower-value contracts often specify a sole arbitrator by default.
Language of the proceedings affects cost indirectly: choosing a language other than the one the underlying contract and correspondence were drafted in adds translation and interpretation costs that do not appear in the administrative fee schedule at all. None of the deadlines within the procedure are fixed calendar counts published in advance for every case; the timetable is set by the tribunal at the case management conference and adjusted as the case develops, which means the two questions worth asking before filing are not "how many days" but what timetable this tribunal is likely to set, and what non-compliance with it costs.
Where it usually goes wrong
A pathological clause, one that names an institution incorrectly, specifies a seat that does not exist, or contradicts itself on the number of arbitrators, does not automatically fail; tribunals and courts try to give effect to the parties' evident intent to arbitrate. But a pathological clause adds a preliminary jurisdictional fight that a clean clause would not have produced, and that fight is litigated at the parties' expense before the substantive dispute is even reached.
Parallel proceedings are the second recurring failure. A party that starts court litigation on the same claim while an SCC arbitration is pending, whether out of genuine belief the clause does not apply or as a tactical delay, forces the other side to fight on two fronts simultaneously. The tribunal does not automatically stay for the court case, and the court does not automatically stay for the tribunal; each forum decides its own jurisdiction independently until one of them issues a ruling the other has to respect.
Multi-contract and multi-party structures, common in construction and supply chains with several linked agreements not all containing the same arbitration clause, are the third source of difficulty. Consolidating related claims into a single case is possible under the Rules but is not automatic, and a claimant who assumes consolidation will happen can find itself running two or three parallel cases instead of one.
Finally, an award rendered without proper regard for a party's right to be heard, most often because a procedural deadline was enforced too rigidly against a party that had a genuine reason for delay, is vulnerable to a challenge at the seat. This is not a drafting failure, it is a conduct failure during the case, and it is largely preventable by treating the tribunal's procedural directions as binding rather than as suggestions.
What to do next
The steps above cover the mechanics that apply to most SCC cases; they do not tell you whether your specific clause is enforceable against your specific counterparty, or what a tribunal is likely to do with your specific set of facts. That assessment requires reading the contract, the correspondence, and, where the counterparty is abroad, checking how an eventual award would actually be enforced against its assets, a question addressed in more detail in the Jurisdiction Report.
Where the clause, the counterparty, or the anticipated relief raises a question this material does not answer, the next step is a direct assessment of the case rather than further reading. For the broader set of dispute resolution questions this page sits within, see the disputes and arbitration practice overview.