The chief of the Australian Confidences Exchange (ASX) said the company’s approaching shift to blockchain tech could bring opportunities to the wider securities work.
In a results call for H1 2020 Thursday, reported by ZDNet, ASX CEO Dominic Stevens said: “We’re very excited about the long-term helps this can bring to clearing and settlement specifically, and to the efficiency of the securities industry in Australia generally,” Stevens said.
Specifically, Stevens was discussing the ASX’s condition of a blockchain-based replacement for its now-aging clearing system called CHESS. Work has been ongoing for several years in partnership with U.S. enterprise Digital Asset (DA), which is working on the blockchain underpinnings of the platform.
According to ZDNet, industry testing is now set for July 2020. DA chance that process was expected to take about a year when it received backing from the ASX in its $35 million in Series C underwriting in December 2019.
According to Stevens, the opportunities the digital ledgers bring to securities clearing are “being recognized by customers and third partisans and these opportunities are developing in a range of areas including risk management and process automation.”
With ASX taking an beforehand lead when it comes to rebuilding with blockchain, other industry players have been seeking aid from the bourse, its CEO said. However, while that potentially offers the firm new business options, it’s leaving that recourse for further down the road as the primary business is “very, very strong.”
Indeed, in its results call, the ASX disclosed an AU$250 million (US$68 million) after-tax profit from take of AU$546 million (US$367), as per an earlier ZDNet report.
Aside from its DLT work, ASX is looking at other new technologies to redesign itself for the digital age. “We’re as a matter of fact transforming our entire technology stack from the operational databases and communications infrastructure we use to the way we deploy distributed ledger, cloud, big information, AI tools,” said Stevens.
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