SWIFT and seven central securities depositories (CSDs) are working together to demonstrate how distributed ledger technology could be implemented in post-trade scenarios, such as corporate actions processing, including voting and proxy-voting. The group will investigate the types of new products that can be built using it, and how existing standards such as ISO 20022 can support it.
Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, Caja de Valores, Depósito Central de Valores, Nasdaq Market Technology AB, National Settlement Depository, SIX Securities Services and Strate are among the CSDs participating in the DLT project with SWIFT. Additional CSDs are expected to join.
Today, securities processing, particularly in areas requiring multi-party contact, involve extremely cumbersome manual processes that can carry significant inherent cost and risk. At this stage, SWIFT and the CSDs have defined the product requirements for an e-voting solution based on DLT that includes common standards (ISO 20022) and principles.
Other aspects include fostering collaboration amongst the CSD community in DLT research and development, helping define the role of financial market infrastructure providers in markets based on distributed ledgers and; identifying, defining and developing additional use cases for DLT in a CSD environment and the post-trade landscape, such as services for different kinds of DLT-based digital assets.
In addition, the group will focus on creating and adapting common standards and principles for the use of DLT amongst CSDs and the financial industry, and promoting the adoption of those standards and principles to other parties, including regulators.