The central securities depositories (CSDs) of South Africa and Russia have signed a letter of intent to develop a distributed ledger technology (DLT), which will initially focus on proxy voting.
Strate and Russia’s National Settlement Depository (NSD) instigated the partnership at this year's Sibos in Geneva.
According to NSD, which was one of the early adopters of financial organisations to explore the use of DLT for proxy voting, CSDs will benefit from industry-wide collaboration to better face the changes presented by DLT technology.
NSD also highlighted that other CSDs have “expressed interest’” in joining the partnership, which Strate and NSD have welcomed.
In a statement on the partnership, NSD noted: “Given that there is the potential for financial markets to create a distributed ledger that settles securities transactions, financial market infrastructures need to embrace the technology and identify opportunities that will add value to their current clients.”
Monica Singer, CEO of Strate, said: "It is an important time for CSDs to be working together to define the future landscape in the DLT environment. Strate looks forward to developing this long-standing and valuable relationship with NSD to develop solutions for emerging market CSDs.”
Eddie Astanin, chair of the executive board of NSD, added: “We believe that the securities settlement and custody industry is one of the promising sectors where we can use new technologies.”
“I think that post-trading may become the starting point of transition of the distributed ledger technology and blockchain from theory to practice. In 2015, we began research and initiated new developments; since that time we have developed valuable expertise in this sphere, and now we are eager to share it with our colleagues.”
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