Last week, Francisco Béjar, CEO of Iberclear (BME) moderated the panel "Digital assets and technology: a business opportunity for the sector", organized by the specialized magazine Funds People.
The roundtable, which was also attended by Francisco Maroto (BBVA), Emma Urraca (BNP Paribas), Alejandro de los Ojos (Caceis), Aurora Cuadros (Cecabank) and Óscar Pino (Inversis), discussed the importance of combining the maximum security and reliability offered by depository institutions with the most disruptive technologies, which are increasingly present in the sector.
Among other issues, the panel discussed the ability of DLT technology to offer and streamline services, but always coexisting with current processes and preserving the central role of the depositary to protect investors.
The seminar on depository organised by Funds People offered several facts about the relevance of technology in the sector. For example, 30% of respondents to the IV Funds People Depository and Custody survey stated that the priority and efforts of depository and custody institutions is digitalisation. José María Marcos, general director of entities at the CNMV, also highlighted the boom in technological processes.
Digitalisation and innovation are fundamental to Iberclear's day-to-day work. Recently, for example, BME has published a White Paper detailing the learnings from participating in the Eurosystem's experimentation programme for the settlement of payment transactions using digital tokens issued by the European Central Bank (ECB).
The experimentation carried out by BME and Iberpay, with the participation of large custodians of the Spanish market (Banco Cooperativo Español, BNP Paribas, CACEIS Bank Spain, CaixaBank, Cecabank, Kutxabank Investment, Banco Sabadell, Renta 4 Banco, Société Générale and Unicaja, in collaboration with the Eurosystem), evaluated the potential of distributed ledger technology (DLT) to transform the settlement processes of tokenized financial assets through the use of wholesale digital money issued by central banks (wCBDC).
More information about the panel can be found at Funds People.