Nivaura, a London and Italy based Fintech, has delivered the technology underpinning Singapore-based DBS Bank’s groundbreaking bond issuance platform.
This is the world's first deployment of an end-to-end workflow that spans the entire supply chain of a bank's internal functions, and connects to its internal systems.
Nivaura configured and deployed its core workflow digitisation and automation technology, Aurora, to meet DBS’s specific needs. Nivaura’s Aurora also underpins LSEG Flow, a multi-dealer marketplace.
The new DBS platform enables its origination, syndicate, legal, operations and sales desks to easily communicate and share complex transactional information to manage the end to end flow of transaction data and documentation. It also powers key external facing interfaces/screens that enable issuers, investors and service providers (such as listing and paying agents) to interact through both machine-human or machine to machine interaction.
This platform is deployed on-premises but it can be deployed in the cloud, which enables the platform operator to manage complex and fundamental security requirements and handle high volume transaction flow, e.g. for self led structured notes. The platform also gives dealer teams the flexibility to enhance the platform through proprietary services and interfaces such as analytics.
The platform utilises General-purpose Legal Mark-up Language (GLML), a human-readable mark-up language pioneered by Nivaura and designed for easy use by lawyers or other professionals without programming experience.
The platform also enables complete transaction cycle management for direct issuance; and the data can feed into the tokenization services to enable registration and settlement on a blockchain, as in the case for DBS's digital token exchange.
Clifford Lee, Global Head of Fixed Income, DBS, said: “The time is ripe for traditional ways of bond origination to make way for a more digital approach, to do what has been aspired for so long - by taking the first step towards the creation of an independent platform that allows bond issuers efficient and effective direct access to the market place and bond investors. The FIX Marketplace marks the first step in this ambitious journey to democratise the capital markets for better transparency and broader financial inclusion. This can only be done effectively in consultation and collaboration with market players and participants, including arrangers, issuers, investors, lawyers, auditors and clearing houses. Through this collective effort, we can enhance the capabilities and features of the FIX Marketplace to best transform the market for the better.”
The platform has already been endorsed by issuers such as Keppel Corp, which cited the ability to respond swiftly to market opportunities with self-executable offerings. It has also been welcomed by investors, with Phillip Securities suggesting that easier access to commercial paper would allow investors to secure higher returns over short-term deposits.
Dr. Avtar Singh Sehra, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Nivaura commented: “Nivaura has been honoured to work closely with DBS and will be in close support as it brings this groundbreaking new digital issuance platform to life. We believe the success of this platform will trigger accelerating interest in this new digitisation and automation paradigm for capital markets globally. Issuers and investors need to cut complexity, time and cost out of primary capital markets by automating workflows - and banks know they need to lead on this. GLML will play a crucial role in ensuring different new platforms can be interoperable, ensuring the market benefits fully from digitisation and automation.”
Over the last five years Nivaura has taken a leading role in bringing efficiency to the primary markets, in active dialogue with regulators and capital markets participants. Nivaura aims to solve the complex issues around the negotiation and documentation of structured data in the primary markets, and its digital and workflow solutions are designed to be product-agnostic (e.g. between cash settled products and tokenization). Its solutions are fully flexible, with configurable implementation options including: bespoke, private cloud or on-premise deployment; customisable functionality and white-labelling; and real-time workflows which adapt in response to external data. It pioneered General-purpose Legal Mark-up Language (GLML), a human-readable mark-up language designed for easy use by lawyers or other professionals without any programming experience. GLML makes legal document templates machine readable, enabling transaction data in documents to be captured as “structured data”. GLML has been designed with debt capital market transactions (particularly high volume MTN and CP issuance) in mind, but has a much wider potential.