Exploring Blockchain’s Real Impact on Securities Financing, Collateral Management and the Repo Market
- Future of Finance
- Jun 4
- 6 min read
Exploring Blockchain’s Real Impact on Securities Financing, Collateral Management and the Repo Market
Date: June 4th, 2025
Venue: City of London Club 19 Old Broad Street, London EC2N 1DS
Half Day Event: 1.30 pm to 7.30 pm
Audience: Banks and Investment Banks, Asset Managers and Hedge Funds, Corporate Treasurers, CCPs, Custody Banks, Trading and Settlement Platforms, Regulators and Policy Makers, Central Banks and Industry Associations.
Topics
How is blockchain reshaping liquidity and collateral flows in repo, securities lending and payments? What benefits and challenges does this offer for financial professionals and investors in traditional markets?
How can tokenisation unlock new opportunities in traditional financing? What will the future look like?
In what ways are public blockchains and smart contracts revolutionising financial processes?
How are regulators adapting to accommodate blockchain-based solutions in securities financing and collateral management?
This Future of Finance and Tokenovate half-day event will bring together industry leaders, technology experts to explore the impact of blockchain in the future. Through expert insights and though-provoking discussions, we will be uncovering whether blockchain is a game-changer or if it might add to more complexities. The discussions will help you understand what the future of the industry looks like and what does it mean for businesses.
The financial landscape is undergoing a seismic shift, with blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) at the forefront of this transformation. In traditional markets, financial institutions have relied on established ways of borrowing, lending, and managing financial assets. But these processes can not only be inefficient but also complex and costly.
Speakers
 Ciarán McGonagle Chief Legal & Product Officer at Tokenovate  |  Roy Zimmerhansl Head of Capital Markets at WTS Hansuke  |  Adrian Dale Head of Regulation & Market Practice at ISLA  |
 Doug Bambrick Head of Custody Product – UK and Middle East  |  Ben Brophy Head of Blockchain at Fidelity International  |  Sophia Shluger Founder, Theia Advisors – Blockchain consultancy |
 Anna Matson Senior Vice President, Digital Assets & Financial Markets at Northern Trust Corporation  |  Romin Dabir Partner, Financial Services Regulatory at ReedSmith  |  Basu Choudhury Head of Partnerships and Alliances at OSTTRA  |
 Yalini Isweran Senior Vice President, Digital Assets & Financial Markets at Northern Trust Corporation  |  John Allan Head of Innovation at the Investment Association  |  Marcus van Abbe Head of Digital Market Infrastructure at R3  |
 Martin O’Connell Solutions Architect at HQLAX  |  Steve Whyman European Commercial Head of Digital Asset Funds and Business at Apex  |
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Moderator | ||
 Bob Currie Contributing Editor at Future of Finance  |
Agenda
13.30 to 14.00 – Registration Opens with coffee and biscuits
14.00 to 14.15 – Opening Address: Future of Finance
14.15 to 14.30 – Sponsor Address
Panel 1
14.30 to 15.00: How is blockchain reshaping liquidity and collateral flows in repo, securities lending and payments? What benefits and challenges does this offer for financial professionals and investors in traditional markets?
Topics and Questions:
What problems does blockchain solve in the sec finance sector for lenders, borrowers and intermediaries?
Is blockchain necessary to deliver these benefits?
Will the transition journey create a digital mirror of the model traditionally employed in the TradFi’ funding and financing world? Or follow a new path that bypasses the old mistakes and inefficiencies?
How will this change how sec lending and repo is done across the transaction lifecycle – from pre-trade (documentation, onboarding), through execution, collateral management … through to close of the return leg? Where do you identify greatest benefit?
How will this reshape the role of financial intermediaries? Will this trigger disintermediation? Or ‘re-intermediation’ with the entrance of new intermediaries and prompting others to reconfigure or exit?
How will existing agent lenders need to transform themselves? How will triparty evolve?
What are the blockers to this transition? Technology? Resources? Regulation? Reluctance to change existing business practices and operational culture?
How does the business case stack up for this transition? How quickly will you see tangible efficiency gains and improvement in net income for your division?
Panellist:
TBC
Moderated by Bob Currie, Contributing Editor at Future of Finance
Panel 2
15.00 to 15.30: How can tokenisation unlock new opportunities in traditional financing? What will the future look like?
Topics and Questions:
Early releases on permissioned blockchain have offered new models for DvD collateral transformation and DvP financing of security tokens against digital liquidity. How do these improve on traditional TradFi approaches? How do we build on these?
Progress from proof of concept to launch to building scale has been relatively slow for some releases we have seen. Why? How do we accelerate adoption?
Securities finance has confronted longstanding problems of collateral mobility and collateral fragmentation. What can tokenisation deliver to address these constraints?
What potential does this offer to extend securities lending and financing activities to new categories of lender and borrower?
Atomic settlement should reduce counterparty risk and ease problems around settlement liquidity. How will this drive changes to the sec finance ecosystem – including the supporting infrastructure?
What will ‘cash’ look like in the cash leg of digital repo transactions? Commercial-bank issued stablecoin on permissioned blockchain? Access to a large digital liquidity pool sitting on public chains (stablecoins, cryptocurrencies etc)? What role for CBDCs?
How will demand from liquidity taker change as the transition evolves?
Will there be demand for both cleared and non-cleared repo in this digital financing ecosystem?
How, if at all, will this support advances in collateral optimisation? And new opportunities for financing against baskets of collateral?
Panellist:
Roy Zimmerhansl – Head of Capital Markets at WTS Hansuke
Moderated by Bob Currie, Contributing Editor at Future of Finance
15.30 to 16.30 Coffee Break and Networking
Panel 3
16.30 to 17.00: In what ways are public blockchains and smart contracts revolutionising financial processes?
Topics and Questions:
Financial products are, in simple terms, bundles of rights and obligations governed by conditional logic. What are the challenges in capturing these rights and obligations digitally in a smart contract and using this to deliver event-driven automation?
What are the limitations of applying traditional legal frameworks when addressing the properties of digital assets?
What refinements need to be made to model legal agreements such as GMRA and GMSLA to support lending and financing of digital assets?
How will this help in managing recalls, substitutions and other lifecycle hotspots?
Settlement failures in TradFi environment often result from the failure of an upstream delivery in a chain of transactions. Can DLT and smart contract help to address this without change in operational culture?
What are the challenges of interconnecting private blockchain networks and connecting these to the large public DeFI ecosystem?
What potential does this offer to extend lending and financing of real-world assets to a wider pool of lenders and borrowers? And to extend access for DeFI customers to higher-quality assets, greater diversification and new yield opportunities?
Do public networks offer a model to tackle the silo-problem and to reduce collateral and liquidity fragmentation?
Panellist:
Ciaran McGonagle – Chief Legal and Product Officer at Tokenovate
Sophia Shluger – Founder at Theia Advisors
Moderated by Bob Currie, Contributing Editor at Future of Finance
Panel 4
17.00 to 17.30: How are regulators adapting to accommodate blockchain-based solutions in securities financing and collateral management?
Topics and Questions:
Is there a need for greater consistency across regulatory authorities in terms of how they define digital assets? How does this fit with their established TradFi rulebooks (securities laws, commodities, payments…)?
What risks are presented by regulatory arbitrage? And from activity residing offshore beyond closely-regulated perimeters
What does a well-designed, institutional-grade digital regulatory framework look like for the sec finance sector?
In which areas do industry working groups and trade associations need to liaise with regulators to deliver safety and efficiency alongside flexibility to innovate?
How should digital innovation be applied to make banks more capital efficient and to reduce the regulatory capital cost associated with sec finance transactions?
Financial regulators, and multilateral agencies such as the Bank of International Settlements, have created a range of incubators and innovation hubs designed to bring forward digital innovation projects. Where are these delivering benefits in the sec finance area?
Intuitively, use of smart contracts and centralising recordkeeping on ledger should simplify trade reporting and reduce SFT reporting overheads. Will it?
How should participants be preparing for these regulatory adaptations in terms of their research and consultation, budgeting and implementation?
Panellist:
Romin Dabir – Partner Financial Services Regulatory at Reed Smith
Moderated by Bob Currie, Contributing Editor at Future of Finance
18.00 to 19.30 – Networking Drinks and Canapés
Contact Information
For more information please contact:
Wendy Gallagher
Co-Founder Future of Finance
wendy.gallagher@futureoffinance.biz
Mobile 07725 160903
