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 Asia Pacific with real-time access to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) and Hong Kong Exchange (HKEX)’s anticipated 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. Thanks to 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, said: “As a leading provider of custody and third-party clearing solutions in Asia Pacific, BNP Paribas has an important role to play in ensuring market participants can fully capitalise on the smart contract technology that underpins the latest clearing, trading and settlement innovations.

“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. As a platform-agnostic, smart contract language, it can be used by almost any trading and settlement platform an exchange might select.”

Jon Rout, Business Development Director APAC for Digital Asset, said: “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.

Source: BNP Paribas