Deutsche Börse has selected Digital Asset to power its post-trade platform labeled “D7”. Deutsche Börse has long been interested in the digital security realm and has been pushing forward with the transition towards a digital-only ecosystem.
According to a note distributed by Digital Asset, the new cloud-backed, distributed ledger technology-ready platform paves the way for same-day issuance, paperless, and automated processing for the entire value chain of issuance, custody, settlement, and asset servicing for digital securities.
Yuval Rooz, Digital Aset co-founder and CEO, commented:
“Our shared vision with Deutsche Börse in realizing a digital future for capital markets will not only enable interoperability between financial institutions, but bring greater levels of efficiency, security and transparency to the German and broader global financial markets.”
Jens Hachmeister, Deutsche Börse’s Managing Director, Issuer Services & New Digital Markets, said the digitization of issuance processes is at the forefront of the changing capital markets realm:
“Digital Asset is at the center of this transformation, working with market infrastructures around the world to realize a digital future. It’s with technology partners, like Digital Asset and others, that we can foresee having over 80 percent of German securities digitized via D7 by mid-2022, fostering digitization of the German and European financial markets.”
In the first phase of the roll-out, Deutsche Börse will be working with Digital Asset to build a central registry system. The new registry will be built on a centralized database and other tools. This forms the basis for issuance and custody of “dematerialized securities” in compliance with new German legislation introduced earlier this year.
Going forward, D7 will also support same-day issuance and paperless, automated straight-through processing for certificates and warrants issued at Clearstream Banking AG. Deutsche Börse will leverage Daml smart contracts from Digital Asset to create and process Digital Instruments, the digital description of (electronic) securities, to manage the securities alongside the entire value chain.
Deutsche Börse says that its new central registry is expected to be available in November 2021 followed by the full integration of smart Digital Instruments in mid-2022.
Additional features supporting distributed networks and distributed ledger technology with Daml smart contracts, among other tools, will be forthcoming in 2022 and beyond.
Digital Asset’s exchange clients include the Australian Securities Exchange, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, Nasdaq.