SWIFT and CSD community advance blockchain for post-trade

SWIFT and seven central securities depositories (CSDs) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to work 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 Ltd are among the CSDs participating in the DLT project with SWIFT. Additional CSDs are expected to join in the coming weeks.

“To ensure interoperability and smooth migration, it is crucial that new technologies support existing common standards such as ISO 20022,” says Stephen Lindsay, Head of Standards at SWIFT. ““ISO 20022 is a messaging standard but also defines terminology across asset classes and corporate actions. An agreement on using the same set of definitions and concepts is important, as they will be independent of the technology or data format.”


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