AXA Investment Managers (AXA IM) announced that it’s participated in two market initiatives based on blockchain infrastructure and using the Banque de France’s (BdF) tokenized cash solution. These two experiments are part of the Call for Expression of Interest launched in December 20231 by the European Central Bank (ECB) to experiment on new technologies for settlement of wholesale financial transactions in digital central bank money (CeBM).
The success of these experiments is a further signal that blockchain technology is well on the way to achieving the level of maturity and security needed to positively disrupt financial market processes, improving the client experience by accelerating the treatment of financial transactions.
The first experiment involved a €3 million investment by AXA IM, on behalf of AXA France, into a digital sovereign bond issued by the Republic of Slovenia. The transaction was executed on BNP Paribas’ “Neobonds” tokenization platform (integrated within BNP Paribas Global Markets’ infrastructure), with settlement on T+1 and using DL3S, the Banque de France’s distributed ledger technology (DLT) solution.
The second experiment consisted in executing a fund share subscription of €1 million from Generali into AXA Court Terme with instant settlement process using digital CeBM via IZNES blockchain platform.
Laurence Arnold, global head of Innovation for Client Operations, Performance & Reporting at AXA IM, said in a statement: “Combining both assets and cash on chain show the full potential of blockchain technology for financial markets. These efforts are an integral part of our ongoing work on digital assets and tokenization.”