BNP Paribas Securities Services has announced a new partnership with Digital Asset to design real-time trade and settlement apps using smart contracts.

The new apps will provide market participants in Asia Pacific with real-time access to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) and Hong Kong Exchange (HKEX)’s anticipated distributed ledger-based trading and settlement platforms.

The first solution, due in 2021, is a smart elections service for corporate actions. All parties in the chain will receive corporate action information, such as dividend reinvestment or purchase offer decisions at the same time, reducing processing time, improving operational efficiency and enabling investors to finalise their decisions on the most current information on market factors.

Luc Renard, head of financial intermediaries and digital transformation across Asia Pacific for BNP Paribas Securities Services, said: “We are excited to lay the foundations of our direct connectivity to the ASX’s next-generation solution and the future phase of HKEX's platform with our first DAML-based solutions.”

Jon Rout, business development director for Asia Pacific at Digital Asset, added: “Our work with BNP Paribas has the potential to change the way organisations design their post-trade and custodial functions – increasing the scope for innovation and reducing risk.”

BNP Paribas will connect to the ASX CHESS+ platform and the anticipated HKEX Synapse solution via the new Ledger Application Programming Interface (API) for real-time information flows.

In Australia, BNP Paribas will take a segregated node in the ASX CHESS+ distributed ledger, enabling the bank to offer its clients the benefits of smart contract technology, including real-time information, rapid innovation and workflow automation from issuer to investor.

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