DTCC to Use Blockchain to Reduce Derivatives Processing Costs

Financial markets infrastructure firm, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), announced today that it has selected IBM, Axoni and R3 to create a Blockchain framework to improve the derivatives post-trade lifecycle. This marks an important real world application for the technology as the DTCC’s current Trade Information Warehouse (TIW) automates more than $11 trillion of cleared and bilateral credit derivatives.

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The solution is meant to streamline and reduce the cost of derivatives processing. It is developed with input from Barclays, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan, UBS, Wells Fargo, IHS Markit and Intercontinental Exchange. DTCC says development is expected to begin in this month and build on Axoni’s AxCore distributed ledger protocol which will be submitted to Hyperledger when the solution goes live, anticipated in early 2018.

Groundbreaking

Chris Childs, CEO of DTCC Deriv/SERV said: “IBM, Axoni and R3 offer valued DLT expertise as well as a strong commitment to the Hyperledger community and industry standards. We are pleased that they have chosen to Leverage their collective expertise and collaborate with us on this initiative, which will allow us to build the best solution for the marketplace while minimizing cost to the industry and expediting our speed to market.”

Bridget Van Kralingen, Senior Vice President, IBM Industry Platforms, said: "As one of the largest and most groundbreaking distributed ledger projects to date in the financial services industry, DTCC together with its member banks are reimagining the credit derivatives process. The combined expertise of IBM and our partners enables us to provide DTCC with a resilient, open and innovative new technology platform to support this groundbreaking opportunity."

Greg Schvey, CEO of Axoni, said: “Deploying distributed ledger technology in production at this scale is a watershed moment for the industry. The combination of technology and business expertise being contributed to this project from across the participating firms is unparalleled and the benefits are clear. We look forward to working with DTCC and the project partners to bring those benefits to the market.”

David Rutter, CEO of R3, stated: “We’re very excited to be working with this team, as DTCC seeks to enhance its derivatives processing technology. Distributed ledger technology is a natural fit for derivatives processing. By recording and automatically managing shared records of financial agreements in the cloud without error, it can minimize the steps required for post-trade processing and free up middle and back office staff from the onerous task of reconciliation.”