BlockEx, an institutional grade exchange with Blockchain assets origination, has announced a new partnership with the international law firm Winston & Strawn LLP, with the purpose of creating standardized templates for approximately 90% of the legal documentation required for bond issuance.

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“We have been closely watching developments in blockchain technology and have been looking at opportunities to create efficiencies for existing structures by incorporating blockchain technology,” said Angus Duncan, a finance partner at Winston & Strawn in London. “We are delighted to be working with BlockEx on their exciting new project.”

The developers say that these smart contracts will dramatically reduce the time and cost of bond issuances and have already garnered the company a dozen new issues which are currently under due diligence vetting. Furthermore BlockEx is leveraging its existing software to bring about enhanced automation to the entire lifecycle of a bond in order to further reduce costs.

“The BlockEx Platform will democratise bond issuances enabling small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to tap into bond markets at lower costs. A bond issuance will normally cost between $200,000 to $400,000 once banking and legal fees are accounted for,” said James Godfrey MD Capital Markets at BlockEx. “Listing on exchanges and obtaining bond ratings can add $165,00 to $200,00.”

“We have received a lot of interest from SMEs who have been excluded from capital markets because the costs of going through a bond issuance are too high. The BlockEx Digital Asset Creation tool for SME debt via bonds, trade finance and syndicated loans radically changes the existing set-up,” said Adam Leonard, CEO at BlockEx.

“The BlockEx Platform will shave costs by 50 – 75%. This is a huge opportunity for SMEs and BlockEx is proud to provide the gateway to make this happen,” said Aleks Nowak, CIO at BlockEx. Instantaneous clearing and settlement of transactions means bond trades operate in T+30 seconds, as opposed to T+5 days, reducing counterparty risk. Transparency is uniquely increased, with KYC and due diligence available at the time of issuance.

The BlockEx Digital Asset Platform will be launching at the end of May 2017 with a full exchange, white label brokerage and debt origination tools that allows for full lifecycle management of Blockchain based financial assets.