In other news, Hazeltree has a new CTO, the NY Fed explores DLT, and JPMorgan expands in Greece.
GLEIF Launches Open Source MIC-to-LEI Mapping
SWIFT headquarters
SWIFT, the global financial messaging services and systems cooperative, and the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) are cooperating to offer financial services firms a new, free way to gather, aggregate, and reconcile counterparty information via a new interoperability across parallel identity platforms, officials say.
GLEIF reports that it expanded its collaboration with SWIFT by “providing certification for the mapping of the Market Identifier Code (MIC) to the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI),” which GLEIF oversees.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is pushing MICs “as an international standard to identify markets, trading platforms, and exchanges to allow for automated processing of trades,” according to Investopedia.
“The resulting launch of a new open-source file mapping the MIC to the LEI will further enable market participants that use GLEIF and/or SWIFT data, such as financial institutions and public authorities involved in risk analysis and market monitoring, to link and cross-reference key entity identifiers, free of charge,” according to GLEIF. “This will ease the process of gathering, aggregating and reconciling counterparty information based on interoperability across parallel identity platforms.”
The new collaboration between GLEIF and SWIFT “builds on a cooperation established in 2018 to link the Business Identifier Code (BIC) to the LEI. The MIC is … used to process and clear trades and is gaining traction as the securities industries move toward straight through processing,” according to GLEIF.
Hazeltree Taps ION Treasury for its New CTO
Hazeltree, which specializes in treasury and liquidity management technology for the alternative asset industry, reports that it has appointed Paul Higdon as its next chief technology officer (CTO). Higdon joins from ION Treasury, where he was chief product officer.
Higdon has more than 20 years of experience in the financial services industry, Hazeltree says in a statement.
Higdon’s mandate as CTO includes “driving innovation to deliver tangible customer value through the application of modern technologies, domain expertise, user-centered design, lean thinking, and agile delivery,” the vendor says.
He will report directly to Hazeltree CEO Tushar Amin. — L.Ch
NY Fed’s Innovation Center to Explore Distributed Ledgers
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reports that its New York Innovation Center (NYIC) will “participate in a proof-of-concept project to explore the feasibility of an interoperable network of central bank wholesale digital money and commercial bank digital money operating on a shared multi-entity distributed ledger.”
The 12-week proof-of-concept project “will test the technical feasibility, legal viability, and business applicability of distributed ledger technology to settle the liabilities of regulated financial institutions through the transfer of central bank liabilities,” the NY Federal Reserve Bank says in a statement
“The NYIC looks forward to collaborating with members of the banking community to advance research on asset tokenization and the future of financial market infrastructures in the U.S. as money and banking evolve,” Per von Zelowitz, director of the New York Innovation Center, says in a prepared statement.
“This project will be conducted in a test environment and only use simulated data. It is not intended to advance any specific policy outcome, nor is it intended to signal that the Federal Reserve will make any imminent decisions about the appropriateness of issuing a retail or wholesale CBDC [Central Bank Digital Currency], nor how one would necessarily be designed. The findings of the pilot project will be released after it concludes,” the statement adds. — L.Ch
JPMorgan to Expand in Greece
JPMorgan reports that it is planning for a new office in Athens, Greece, to “support the organic growth of its businesses in the country.”
The new office also will include a new “payments innovation lab for which the firm will be hiring a payments research and development team locally,” per the prepared statement from the investment bank.
JPMorgan intends to hire “around 50 employees” initially for the lab, “including payments product and engineering specialists. JPMorgan’s employees already based in Athens, who work across the Corporate & Investment Bank and Asset & Wealth Management businesses, will also move to the new office. The firm is in active discussions around securing suitable real estate to accommodate this … expansion in the country,” the statement notes.
The lab “will provide research and development to the Payments business globally, including working with Onyx by JPMorgan. Onyx is JPMorgan’s business unit that leverages cutting-edge technologies such as blockchain to develop innovative financial services products, platforms and marketplaces for the firm and its clients. From the outset, the center will concentrate on supporting the development of solutions around distributed ledger technology, artificial intelligence and cryptography related to payments systems,” officials say.
Recruitment for the payments lab will “begin immediately, including for a head of the division, which will be announced in the coming months,” the JPMorgan statement adds. — L.Ch
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