The agora software will leverage R3’s Corda Enterprise to provide the first end-to-end digital service to manage the entire life cycle of a bond.

agora will enhance, upgrade and improve communication and processes from a bond’s issuance to repayment at its term. The agora software, utilising Corda Enterprise as a key component, will be made available to issuers, arrangers and multiple service providers to the international bond markets. It will assist all these participants in the bond market processes from the pre-mandate stage, through execution, pricing and primary settlement, on through life into the secondary market, all the way to final redemption.

Corda Enterprise – the commercial distribution of R3’s Corda platform - has been selected as it has been specifically designed for the exacting standards of the highly regulated financial services market. These demand quality of service, speed, security, stability and confidentiality. In addition, Corda Enterprise provides interoperability, scalability, controlled access to information for authenticity, and the permissioned traceability of a bond, including its ownership and other criteria.

DDCM is already collaborating with major issuers, investment banks and critical service providers, to ensure correct functionality to promote network effect and encourage wide adoption. Many of these global and regional investment banks are already investors and members of R3. This, combined with the growing Corda developer community, creates a user ecosystem well placed to be early adopters of agora given the interoperability of Corda Enterprise platform.

Charlie Berman, Chief Executive Officer at DDCM said, “Today the bond market operates with multiple data siloes requiring repetitive manual inputs of the same information and continuous reconciliation. We are building a business with Corda Enterprise Distributed Ledger Technology as a central component to digitally service all the participants in the bond market throughout the life cycle of a bond. Corda provides, confidential, scalable, interoperable, permissioned, blockchain technology allowing us to work collaboratively to join these data siloes together improving functionality, efficiency and service and greatly improving levels of straight through processing. These technologies have allowed us to create solutions for the existing inefficiencies in the bond market, but also pave the way for SmartBonds capable of performing their own functions.”

David E. Rutter, Chief Executive Officer at R3, said: “We are already seeing blockchain drive innovation across industries for which integrity of information is paramount. This is evident in the technology’s role in differentiating users, ensuring privacy to control access and authenticity for traceability. We are proud to partner with agora as they seek to bring improvements to the bond issuance process and bring much needed efficiencies across the wider market. ”