At the beginning of November 2020, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) launched a central securities lending platform based on blockchain technology. This new platform aims at more effectively addressing investor needs in securities lending, and capital market participants can directly engage in securities lending for a wide variety of key financial instruments.
TASE Clearing House is currently working on distributing the data on securities lending among market participants and is not publishing transaction numbers at this time, but an annual report stated that upon launch of the new system, securities lending between TASE members throughout the trading day has increased and is expected to gain traction within the coming months.
Offers from institutional investors and brokerage firms show several dozens of securities available for loan, with the majority at 90-day term and fees peaking at 4bps for Delta. A member of the TASE team said that the quantities offered for loan in each security can be increased significantly as demand grows based on conversations with participants.
The use of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) as the foundation of this new trading platform harnesses some of the technology’s key advantages and features, such as: direct peer-to-peer transactions, smart contracts and record immutability.