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Custodians giving clients sight of their
data through blockchain could be fruitful
We sit down with Tim Hogben, COO at ASX, and Chris Church, chief business development officer at Digital
Asset, who say custodians stand to benefit from using the technology for new revenue-generating products
around data services.
A
llowing clients to see custodians’ databases through
blockchain could drive significant new revenues and
help them differentiate with competitors, according to one
of the pioneers of the technology in market infrastructure.
Speaking to Global Custodian, the chief operating officer
(COO) for the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) and
the man responsible for the exchange’s implementation
of a permissioned blockchain post-trade platform, believes
custodians could use the technology for new revenue-gen-
erating products around data services.
“Most of the custodian space is achieving high levels of
STP (straight-through processing), so while cutting cost is
the quickest and most effective way to improve the bottom
line, opportunities to do such are drying up and therefore
they are now looking at other value-added services,” said
Tim Hogben, COO, ASX.
“A lot of the current discussion and analysis is around ac-
count hierarchies, so how can they provide greater real-time
transparency at a client level over their assets?”
“Actually granting them permission to see parts of their
database will create a lot of benefits from a real-time
reporting perspective and gives them structured data in
a format they can trust and query in a customised way.
Providing these tools [for custodians] to reduce exposure
to manual processes, build services for customers such as
report generation, tax, corporate events etc. this is where
the excitement is in this space.”
The ASX is currently working with custodians to make
ASX's pathway for the replacement of CHESS
Develop a prototype plat-
form using DLT technology
January 2016 – July 2016
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Global Custodian
Fall 2018
Formal gathering of business
requirements for a replace-
ment system – to perform
all current core functions
of CHESS, with limited
introduction of new features
initially
Commenced August 2016
Build out the prototype to
an ‘industrial scale’ platform
using DLT technology
End-2017