Setl Launches Blockchain Platform for Funds Record Keeping

The firm worked with four of the largest buy-side players in France—OFI, Groupama, La Financière de l’Échiquier, and Arkéa Investment Services—on Iznes, which is built on a distributed-ledger technology foundation.

All of them joined the project in late 2015 when Setl was already building the platform, in order to provide their insights on how the solution should work and what are the key issues the industry is trying to solve. 

Peter Randall, CEO of Setl, tells WatersTechnology that the collaboration produced a platform with which the four firms could have a competitive offering in the marketplace. 

“One of the most significant requirements they have is to see lower costs for processing business,” Randall says. “The existing method by which this industry operates is very expensive and rather slow. By improving the speed and reducing the cost of processing the business, the opportunity for best customer service, low prices and higher speeds were persuasive.” 

The platform provides a range of services to investors and asset managers, including the ability to process subscription and redemption instructions, and manage know-your-customer requirements. It has built-in settlement and position-keeping capabilities, owing to its distributed ledger base.

The current version of the platform is going to be enhanced from early 2018. According to Randall, the core operating systems and modules are all built, running at high speed and low cost. 

“The principal enhancements relate to specific client facing pages for individual participants in the platform,” he says. “The next challenge is to be able to offer the individual asset managers the opportunity to integrate that within their own systems and replace the expensive systems they currently use.”