A major financial infrastructure provider in Switzerland has partnered with blockchain startup Digital Asset Holdings to build a proof-of-concept focused on securities market infrastructure.
SIX Securities Services and Digital Asset will create a “roadmap” for how the technology can be applied across the entire securities life-cycle.
Distributed ledger technology is “key” to the future of SIX Securities’ post-trading business, according to Division CEO Thomas Zeeb:
Zeeb said in a statement:
“We need to understand it, and more importantly, its applicability and future flexibility in order to keep ahead of the game. Partnering with Digital Asset is a way to accelerate our own development plans and leverage their experience in this area.”
The project aims to demonstrate how to build and incorporate distributed, encrypted, straight-through processing tools into existing securities transaction flows. Following the completion of the roadmap, the companies plan to move to create a production-ready service.
SIX Securities is part of a wider set of services which play a foundational role in the infrastructure for Switzerland’s financial sector, including its primary stock exchange and post-trade settlement services.
Last year, SIX Securities conducted 409m settlement transactions and 31m settlement transactions, for a total volume of 3.1t Swiss Francs ($3.17t), according to its annual report. The company generated about $43m in profit during that time.
Founded in 2008 as a result of the merger of SWX Group, Telecurse Group, and the SIX Group, the company also offers exchange services, financial data and is a card payment processor in Switzerland, Austria and Luxembourg.
Later this month in Geneva, the firm will showcase an early distributed ledger prototype at the Sibos conference.