Swiss Fintech Innovation was founded in March 2016 and started right away with six different working groups on various topics that have the potential to shape the financial sector in the digital transformation.
One of the working groups was dedicated to identify a viable use case for the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), also known as Blockchain technology. Moving beyond the hype, the working group aimed at implementing a DLT use case, which would benefit most of its’ members.
Headed by Rolf Broekhuizen (SIX-Swiss Exchange) and with participants from Credit Suisse, Zürcher Kantonalbank, Vontobel, Axa, Swiss Life and Lombard Odier, the DLT working group evaluated a number of use cases in late 2016. Just a few months later the working group agreed to further pursue the use case SIX proposed: XDL – XBTR on Distributed Ledger Technology.
XBTR is SIX’s bilateral trading platform providing “off-exchange interbank trading of structured products with access to the Swiss Value Chain, thus enabling complete automation – from the placement of a product, its trading, through to final settlement.“ Christoph Landis, Division CEO at SIX Swiss Exchange, said at its launch in 2015. ((source https://financefeeds.com/six-swiss-exchange-opens-xbtr-bilateral-trading-platform/))
This SIX funded SFTI initiative is complementing SIX’s productive bilateral trading platform XBTR by a new, DLT based settlement system, called XDL. This XDL MVP is developed with Nasdaq as a technology partner and will be an independent platform running in parallel to SIX’s existing settlement system SECOM. As XBTR and SECOM are already in production, XDL will leverage the existing legal and technical framework with members.
In November 2017, the test phase is scheduled to start. This provides the SFTI DLT working group members with the unique opportunity to test the XDL MVP in SIX’s production-like member-test environment and thereby gain first-hand experience with Distributed Ledger Technology.
On behalf of all Swiss Fintech Innovation members, we would like to thank Rolf Broekhuizen for his hard work and dedication and congratulate him for the achievements with XDL.