ING has invested in securities lending platform HQLAx, which went live in December 2019.
Currently, over 15 market participants, including CIBC, Citi, Goldman Sachs and ING, are engaged in different phases of onboarding to the HQLAx platform. Commerzbank, Credit Suisse and UBS successfully executed the first live transactions in December.
“HQLAx enables market participants to redistribute their collateral by exchanging the ownership of tokenised securities on Corda’s blockchain platform, which no longer requires the underlying securities to move across users," explains
Mariana Gomez de la Villa, programme director Distributed Ledger Technology at ING. "This removes settlement barriers and improves collateral fluidity, which in turn allows users to manage their liquidities easier, faster and more efficiently."
ING's blockchain team developed the initial version of the HQLAx application and together with Credit Suisse was the first to execute a live collateral swap with full legal exchange of contracts and settlement back in March 2018.
“The successful commercial launch of HQLAx is a big milestone for the implementation of blockchain in the securities lending market and proof that blockchain can bring tangible benefits to the industry,” says de la Villa. “It’s rewarding to see that a project we’ve been working on for years, is now live.”
ING joins Deutsche Bourse as a shareholder in HQLAx. The value of the transaction was not disclosed.