International Capital Market Features

The team is small (currently three FTE, imminently growing to five with two junior associates joining the association to support our work on Primary, Secondary and FinTech and Digitalisation), but the network and community active in this topic is large.

ICMA focuses on four key activities:

(i) Providing market intelligence and horizon scanning.

(ii) Promoting best practice: delivering open and common models and standards, thereby avoiding fragmentation, driving industry cohesion and consistency and encouraging interoperability.

(iii) Advocacy & regulatory engagement: promoting innovation whilst ensuring safe and effective outcomes for all market participants.

(iv) Running and delivering education & events: building and deepening the networks across our membership, raising awareness of the themes of change, understanding and debating relevant transformation topics.

Almost all our membership (over 600 firms) are involved in the transformation agenda: driving and shaping the way the industry will evolve (see Figure 2 below):

The themes driving transformation are consistent:

(i) Active experimentation with “Digital bonds”, and the emergence of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) - there have been circa 50 bond issuances using DLT over the past five years, and a myriad of other secondary market, repo and collateral activity (circa 100 examples) which we actively track – we also issued a comprehensive set of FAQs on this topic.

(ii) Evolution of Digital forms of cash: Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) & tokenised private sector cash (Fnality, JPM Coin, tokenised CHF etc).

(iii) The evolving global regulatory agendas and legal frameworks required to effectively support and harness automation and innovation – including cross border activity.

(iv) The potential impact of technology and innovation on enhancing liquidity and shortening the settlement cycle (eg moving to T+1 in Europe – and possibly “atomic” settlement (“T” – where T+0 is end of day, and atomic is instantaneous) with DLT).

(v) And on the longer-term horizon, the emergence and impact of potentially important future topics such as artificial intelligence (AI), Cloud, the metaverse and quantum computing (QC).

Figure 2: FinTech and Digitalisation topics that are important to our different member groups

Investors

Automation in primary, secondary & repo activities

Rules of engagement through ETC

Issuers & DMOs

• Automation of funding activities Delivering on specific objectives (such as financial inclusion)

Trading Venues

• Horizon scanning, cross-market activities & technological and regulatory evolution (inc. DLT)

• Rules of engagement for trading crypto-assets

CCPs (Central Counterparties)

Horizon scanning, cross-market activities & technological and regulatory evolution (inc. DLT)

Banks

• Horizon scanning, cross-market activities & technological and regulatory evolution (inc. DLT)

FT&D Strategic Offering

Market intelligence & Horizon Scanning

Promote Best Practice & Common Standards

Advocacy & Regulatory Engagement

Education & Events

ICSDs (International Central Securities Depositories – Euroclear & Clearstream)

• Horizon scanning, cross-market activities & technological and regulatory evolution (inc. DLT)

Law firms

Streamlining of legal documentation processes

Legal considerations for DLT bonds and automation more broadly

Central Banks

DLT and wholesale CBDC

Data providers

Horizon scanning, cross-market activities & technological and regulatory evolution (inc. DLT)

Alignment with ICMA standards e.g. CDD

Consolidated tape advocacy

Opportunities for partnership

Technology Vendors / FinTechs

Horizon scanning, cross-market activities & technological and regulatory evolution (inc. DLT)

Alignment with ICMA standards for product development (CDM/ CDD)

• Commercial objectives (networking with the wider ICMA membership)

Opportunities for partnership