BNP Paribas and Digital Asset to provide access to ASX and HKEX platforms

By Edil Corneille

BNP Paribas Securities Services today announces a new partnership with Digital Asset to design a number of real-time trade and settlement apps using DAML smart contracts.

The new apps will provide market participants in the Asia Pacific with real-time access to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) and the Hong Kong Exchange (HKEX)’s DLT-based trading and settlement platforms. The apps will also be available to clients in markets that have not integrated DLT, bringing them the benefit of real-time workflows.

The first solution, due in 2021, is a smart elections service for corporate actions. With the use of DAML smart contracts, all parties in the corporate action chain will receive corporate action information such as dividend reinvestment or purchase offer decisions at the same time, reducing processing time, improving operational efficiency and enabling investors to finalise their decisions on the most current information on market factors.

Luc Renard, Head of Financial Intermediaries Client Line & Digital Transformation APAC for BNP Paribas Securities Services enthused, “We are excited to lay the foundations of our direct connectivity to the ASX’s next-generation solution and the future phase of HKEX’s platform with our first DAML-based solutions. We believe that DAML has the potential to emerge as a new standard for international capital markets.”

Jon Rout, Business Development Director APAC for Digital Asset elucidated, “Our work with BNP Paribas has the potential to change the way organisations design their post-trade and custodial functions – increasing the scope for innovation and reducing risk. BNP Paribas Securities Services’ vision of bringing real-time post-trade information to clients and leveraging DAML smart contracts to automate client process flows at scale is an indication of just how transformative DLT will be for custody services.”

BNP Paribas will connect to the ASX CHESS+ platform and the anticipated HKEX Synapse solution via the new Ledger Application Programming Interface for real-time information flows.

In Australia, BNP Paribas will take a segregated node in the ASX CHESS+ distributed ledger, enabling the bank to offer its clients the full benefits of smart contract technology, including real-time information, rapid innovation and workflow automation from issuer to investor.