As Mike Bodson accepted a retirement gift from employees in late June, he smiled broadly as he lifted a digital frame displaying a non-fungible token (NFT) — the first-ever created in DTCC history. The NFT — a coin inscribed with three of the most important words in the DTCC lexicon, “Settlement is complete”— was a fitting tribute for a leader who early on in his tenure pledged to make innovation a hallmark of his agenda.
“NFT是一个巨大的惊喜, and I appreciate that it reflects the commitment and passion we’ve brought to building on DTCC’s legacy of leading digital transformation for ourselves and the industry over the past decade,博德森说.
Innovation has been central to DTCC’s success since the firm was founded nearly 50 years ago to resolve the “paper crisis.“那时候, DTCC created the first electronic security — a key innovation that helped usher in a new era where stock information and data would be stored and managed digitally to bring automation, 更低的成本, 降低风险，提高效率.S. 资本市场. Since then, DTCC has played an instrumental role in implementing similar improvements in the fixed income, 共同基金和衍生品市场, 等. 在这个过程中, the firm developed a reputation for standing at the forefront of digital transformation.
Bodson focused on building a culture that encouraged innovation and made strategic investments to help fully leverage the power of new technologies, 包括DLT, cloud, APIs, 机器学习和人工智能.
建设创新文化
Bodson set a stake in the ground for DTCC during his first global employee meeting as CEO in 2013, telling colleagues that the firm has “exciting opportunities to play a more impactful role in the industry, to help our clients meet new regulatory demands and financial challenges and to seize opportunities for expansion and growth.” He delivered a similar message in dozens of client meetings during those early months.
把他的梦想变为现实, Bodson focused on building a culture that promoted and encouraged innovation and made strategic investments to strengthen the capabilities needed to fully leverage the power of new technologies, 包括分布式账本技术(DLT), cloud, 应用程序编程接口, 机器学习和人工智能(AI).
The timing proved prescient as a series of market dynamics and a fast-moving regulatory environment in the mid-2010s prompted clients to demand “faster, better, less expensive” solutions that would address key operational issues immediately, 而不是等待长期的解决方案.
通过数字化转型推动变革
Bodson’s foresight positioned DTCC to provide industry leadership as fintech and digitalization gained additional momentum. It also enabled DTCC to undergo its own digital transformation to remain relevant in a marketplace that was quickly evolving. As Bodson often remarked, “If anyone is going to disintermediate DTCC, it will be DTCC. 我们将引领变革，而不是跟随变革.”
While Bodson often stressed that innovation can take many forms and doesn’t always require new technology, DTCC在DLT和云计算方面的开创性工作, 特别是, 经常引起全球关注. Among the most notable initiatives launched during Bodson’s tenure were:
- DTCC的北美数据存储库, 该公司为美国的衍生品提供数据报告服务.S. and Canada, incorporated cloud technology when it began publishing real-time price reporting to the public on Dec. 2012年1月31日，根据美国的要求.S. 多德弗兰克法案.
- As DLT exploded on the scene, DTCC issued a seminal white paper in January 2016, “Embracing Disruption: Tapping the Potential of Distributed Ledgers to Improve the Post-Trade Landscape,” that described blockchain’s potential to re-imagine the post-trade infrastructure but also cautioned that it is not a cure-all to address every industry challenge.
- That March, DTCC主办了首批大型DLT会议之一, DTCC 2016区块链研讨会, 在纽约拥有近500名行业专业人士. 在11月, DTCC和金融创新研究中心, hosted another 150 industry stakeholders at the Disruptive Technologies Forum 2016 in London.
- In 2017, DTCC began a ground-breaking project to re-platform its credit derivatives 贸易信息仓库(TIW) on distributed ledger technology (DLT) and cloud.
- 第二年, dtcc和埃森哲, Digital Asset and R3—released a study that found DLT could support average daily trading volumes in the U.S. 股票市场每天的交易量超过1亿笔.
- 2020年初，该公司推出了 API的市场 为客户提供, partners and internal developers with a central location for APIs developed by DTCC to streamline access to services and improve the user experience.
除了这些工作, the firm currently has several initiatives underway using combinations of DLT, APIs, 云计算和人工智能有望重塑该行业的关键领域. These include the Digital Securities Management (DSM) platform for the private markets; 项目离子, an alternative settlement platform; and 项目锂—with the Digital Dollar Project—to explore how a central bank digital currency might operate in U.S. 清算与结算.
展望未来
A critical part of DTCC’s innovation culture is recognizing the need for fundamental change. 数字资产的增长, such as tokenized securities and crypto currencies—with the proper governance and standards—is likely to mean that DTCC and other financial market infrastructures (FMIs) will change as well. “I see FMIs moving from the traditional ‘securities for cash’ model to become ‘asset transfer facilitators’ that can process any type of securities transactions,博德森说.
博德森相信，DTCC的新CEO, 弗兰克·拉·萨拉, will continue to build upon the firm’s legacy as a leader on innovation while ensuring that DTCC’s mission will not change: Hold and protect any representation of an asset—digital or otherwise—to safeguard the security of the global financial markets.