While the burden of regulatory requirements on CCPs might seem heavy, they are also a major contributor to the strong position of confidence that CCPs have in the industry and the wider society. Regulations are expected to continue being a critical enforcer, requiring CCPs to have flexible technology solutions in place that allow them to cope with ever-changing requirements.
In the client demand category, clear trends are that CCPs and their members are seeking new, modern ways to interact, and a move towards standardization to improve access to data and enable more cost-effective analysis. Standardization will also allow for “cross-functionalization”, enabling collection of information across different vendors and systems to improve decision-making, and allow for efficiency wins such as cross-asset margins in order to utilize collateral in a more efficient way.
In the technology category, a growing interest in cloud transformation stands out as a prominent trend, as a means to support much needed technology upgrades and to become more resilient and efficient. Furthermore, many see a move to the cloud as an opportunity for their organization to focus on developing the core CCP business rather than spending resources on maintaining and scaling hardware and infrastructure.
Nasdaq’s investment in tech is exemplified by its build-out of the Nasdaq Financial Framework (NFF), in areas like messaging, data centricity and modularity, and commonality across Nasdaq’s market technology product portfolio in operations, data access, security and user experience. The architecture separates interoperable business applications and caters for product and client-specific extensions, all using a set of shared services for security, reference data, scheduling, workflows and data services.
Further to this, it’s important to highlight role of APIs to support well-functioning ecosystems, and how Nasdaq is standardizing its use of APIs, selecting those that are easy to maintain, adopt and consume. Both internally, for communication between business modules within the clearing solution, as well as externally, for efficient communication with trading venues, clearing members, CSDs and banks.