Swiss Financial Infrastructure Firm Testing Blockchain

A major financial infrastructure provider in Switzerland is developing a proof-of-concept focused on securities market infrastructure.

AccessTimeIconSep 23, 2016 at 3:20 p.m. UTC
Updated Sep 11, 2021 at 12:30 p.m. UTC
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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.

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