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ceiving end of creating capabilities
at scale for multiple banks. I see
the whole process or value chain
of what banks do themselves and
what an infrastructure or a service
provider, like we are, is doing will
change dramatically over time.
The second force is that there
will be disintermediation. There is
more demand from customers to
go direct, for instance, a pension
fund that wants direct access to the
exchange instead of via bank, or
retail customers who want to buy
assets directly, not even through a
broker anymore, but almost getting
direct access to some of our ser-
vices. That’s a difficult discussion,
because banks are our customers
and in some cases the market is
driving towards services where
the banks are less involved, so we
need to find solutions where we
still maintain that relationship and
the connection while still moving
the industry forward. We discussed
this at board level and everybody
understands that in some cases
that is required. The general stance
of our shareholders and customers
is that we would rather have SIX
do it than a big technology compa-
ny coming in and taking even more
away from us.
I believe companies driven by
technology, big data or information
will invade the banking space, and
therefore also potentially invade the
space of organisations that provide
services to banks. SIX can leverage
from the smaller tech companies
and start-ups, and if they are at
scale then we can buy or integrate
them, but if the bigger ones, like
Google, come into our space and
decide that it can also run an
exchange or payments that will be
a serious threat. We need to make
sure that our technology capabil-
ities are always current and fresh.
We cannot afford to run with legacy
systems or play catch up, we need
to continuously invest in technol-
ogy to be able to compete, while
also having the huge advantage of
being regulated. That is perhaps
one of the core values that we have
as a company. Regulation, on one
hand, is a pain, but on the other it
gives us a unique position as being
a regulated entity, with FINMA and
regulators giving us a stamp, and
having the opportunity to influence
the regulations. Although I think
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J O S
D I J S S E L H O F ]
those bigger tech companies will
try to invade, we have a really good
chance to compete if we keep our
technology capabilities at the right
level to sustain that.
These companies have deep
pockets and that’s why we need to
continue to invest in our tech-
nology. We need to make sure
we are relevant, agile and cost
efficient, that we are able to deal
with volumes and other elements
that the industry requires, benefit
from cloud solutions and not keep
everything in a private data centre
because that’s the way it used to be.
We need to look at which data sets
to keep very private, which need to
keep at country level and which can
be moved into the public cloud. If
we don’t do these kinds of things,
then we will become a dinosaur.
How has work progressed on the
SIX Digital Exchange and do you
see this as a viable model for the
industry to follow?
JD: We announced that we will
go into this space and did so with
some courage, basically saying that
while we are entering the space,
we do not have all the answers yet.
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