Where Finance Finds Its Future

No market has defied attempts to reconstruct it quite as deftly as foreign exchange (FX). The US$6.6 trillion a day market provides a handsome living for a great many people, despite a succession of embarrassing scandals and the publication by central banks of a global Code of Conduct designed to prevent them.FX has more than survived the disappearance of 19 national currencies into the euro and is even now drawing crypto-currencies into its orbit. One reason FX has retained its freebooting personality is the fact it is regulated everywhere (because banks are regulated) but nowhere. But the real secret of its continued riches is the continuing indifference of the biggest end-users – asset managers, institutional investors and corporates – to value for money in FX. Dr Jamie Walton, co-founder of Raidne, told Dominic Hobson how he is now using the techniques he mastered as a rates quant to help those end-users monitor and trim FX transaction costs and manage the risks of market manipulation and abuse. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1transfer describes itself as the “first transfer agent for the digital world,” by which the founders mean the emerging universe of security tokens.Though it is a consortium venture embracing seven firms in broker-dealing, automated trading, crypto-currency and FinTech, 1transfer is very obviously the brainchild of Houston-headquartered Entoro. The entire raison d’etre of the investment bank is to exploit the accelerating convergence between investment banking, private securities placement, trading and market making, wealth management, crypto-currencies and security tokens. In the light of that strategy, reinventing transfer agency makes perfect sense. Future of Finance co-founder Dominic Hobson spoke to Entoro founder and managing partner Jim Row about where 1transfer came from and where it is going. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1. Will a wallet-based system replace an account-based system?2. How can privacy best concerns be addressed?3. What will the impact of CBDCs be on Stablecoins, crypto-currencies and digital assets more generally?4. What can be programmed into a CBDC by (a) central banks and (b) private commercial banks?5. What are the use-cases for a CBDC?6. How can CBDCs best made inter-operable across national borders?7. What opportunities do CBDCS create for banks to reinvent themselves? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

HQLAx is a properly funded start-up using the R3 Corda variant of blockchain technology to improve the ability of banks to mobilise eligible collateral, wherever it is, by tokenising assets while leaving them exactly where they are. Users expect the service to yield massive benefits in capital and liquidity savings as well as lower operational costs, but the stated aim of the venture - “frictionless ownership transfers of assets” - is capable of extension far beyond the starting-point. Future of Finance co-founder Dominic Hobson spoke with Tilman Fechter, a Member of the Executive Board and Head of Banking, Funding and Financing at Clearstream Banking and also a member of the Board of HQLAx, and Nick Short, chief operating officer (COO) at HQLAx, about the short and long term ambitions of the business. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The UK residential property market is an active one, supporting more than 100,000 transactions a month. But it is also notoriously slow, complicated, inefficient and expensive, with multiple intermediaries extracting transaction costs - guaranteeing anybody who offers to digitise the process a warm welcome from house-buyers and sellers. Counter-intuitively, all those intermediaries - estate agents, conveyancers, lawyers, surveyors, mortgage brokers, lenders, data vendors and government offices – also have much to gain. Dan Salmons, CEO of Coadjute, a start-up whose purpose is to digitise the UK housing market, explained to Future of Finance co-founder Dominic Hobson why it also makes sense for intermediaries to welcome greater efficiency. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you have ever wondered how the global payments industry has made some people very rich indeed, read The Payoff, the new book by former SWIFT CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt and former SWIFT Head of Corporate Affairs Natasha de Terán, published on 1 July. The authors show that the payments industry imposes a massive tax on all forms of economic activity, but for once the villains are not the banks, whose work in managing counterparty, settlement and liquidity risk they consider to be more than useful.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Back in the blockchain heyday of 2016-18 there was no shortage of schemes to apply the technology to primary market issuance, bond market trading, and post-trade settlement and financing. Some of the ideas of that burst of creativity are now coming to market. – Bond issuance on to distributed networks– The on-chain trading of bonds between market participants– The financing of bond market transactions in an on-chain repo market– The use of bonds as collateral to secure commercial and central bank money– Settlement of bond transactions on and off chain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you have ever wondered how the global payments industry has made some people very rich indeed, read The Payoff, the new book by former SWIFT CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt and former SWIFT Head of Corporate Affairs Natasha de Terán, published on 1 July. The authors show that the payments industry imposes a massive tax on all forms of economic activity, but for once the villains are not the banks, whose work in managing counterparty, settlement and liquidity risk they consider to be more than useful.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Many factors inhibit institutional issuers and investors from adopting security tokens as readily as some institutions have taken to crypto-currencies. But an asset class in need of tokenization - privately managed assets - has been identified and an institutional grade infrastructure is being built to welcome institutional investors.Alex Kech, the CEO of the Singapore-based cryptocurrency and digital asset custodian Onchain Custodian, has drawn on 22 years in the securities services industry with BNY Mellon and SWIFT to build a service that makes institutional investors comfortable about investing in the token economy. He spoke to Future of Finance co-founder Dominic Hobson about the current state and likely development of the security token markets, what could happen to traditional service providers and the importance of standardising data exchanges. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Crypto-currency trading provides returns commensurate with the volatility of the asset class, but not many people have subjected the characteristics of the investment to formal analysis. One person who has is Dr Martin Angerer, Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Liechtenstein in Vaduz. He not only teaches modules in Financial Technology and the Basics of Blockchain, and researches crypto-currencies and tokenization, but advises crypto-currency investment funds. Dr Angerer is also closely following developments in the Liechtenstein security token market following the passage of the Blockchain Law in January 2020. He spoke to Dominic Hobson, co-founder of Future of Finance, about crypto-currencies, crypto-currency funds, security token offerings, DeFi and the market infrastructure a token economy needs to make it grow. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.