Swiss Financial Infrastructure Firm Testing Blockchain

A major financial infrastructure provider in Switzerland has partnered with blockchain startup Digital Asset Holdings to build a proof-of-concept focused on securities market infrastructure.

SIX Securities Services and Digital Asset will create a “roadmap” for how the technology can be applied across the entire securities life-cycle.

Distributed ledger technology is “key” to the future of SIX Securities’ post-trading business, according to Division CEO Thomas Zeeb:

Zeeb said in a statement:

"We need to understand it, and more importantly, its applicability and future flexibility in order to keep ahead of the game. Partnering with Digital Asset is a way to accelerate our own development plans and leverage their experience in this area."

The project aims to demonstrate how to build and incorporate distributed, encrypted, straight-through processing tools into existing securities transaction flows. Following the completion of the roadmap, the companies plan to move to create a production-ready service.

SIX Securities is part of a wider set of services which play a foundational role in the infrastructure for Switzerland's financial sector, including its primary stock exchange and post-trade settlement services.

Last year, SIX Securities conducted 409m settlement transactions and 31m settlement transactions, for a total volume of 3.1t Swiss Francs ($3.17t), according to its annual report. The company generated about $43m in profit during that time.

Founded in 2008 as a result of the merger of SWX Group, Telecurse Group, and the SIX Group, the company also offers exchange services, financial data and is a card payment processor in Switzerland, Austria and Luxembourg.

Later this month in Geneva, the firm will showcase an early distributed ledger prototype at the Sibos conference.

Image of Six Securities offices via press images