In the last week of February, we had the great pleasure of attending the third annual edition of the CDM Showcase, held in London and hosted by FINOS in collaboration with ISDA, ISLA, ICMA, alongside financial institutions, regtechs, and industry service providers.
To ensure a smooth experience, half of our team travelled to London on Tuesday, February 25, allowing us to settle into our accommodation. We then joined the other half of the TradeHeader CDM team, who had already been in the city since Monday.
We started the 26th with great enthusiasm, eager to discover what the day had prepared for us, hoping it was filled with insightful presentations from which we could learn and gain some inspiration. Upon arriving at the offices in Churchill Place, we immediately noticed the growing interest and heightened expectations from institutions regarding the use of CDM. This year’s edition had such an impressive level of participation that the venue felt almost too small for the event. This success reaffirms our commitment to further developing and enhancing CDM and its derivative applications. It also serves as a strong indicator that more institutions are embracing a future defined by efficiency, transparency, and increasingly standardized and automated financial market processes.
As an unexpected anecdote, shortly after the first presentations began, a fire alarm went off, so we needed to evacuate. Initially, we assumed it was a routine drill, but we were later informed that there had been an actual alert. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the event organizers for keeping us immediately informed about the situation and for resolving it rapidly. From our side, we turned this incident into a networking opportunity, using the break to enjoy a coffee while discussing relevant aspects and intriguing insights from the morning’s presentations until we were able to return.
Once back at the event, we continued exploring various CDM applications across different areas of financial products. We were particularly fascinated by the use of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence for the digitalization of master agreements and collateral documentation. Additionally, we were impressed by the increasingly widespread adoption of the Digital Regulatory Reporting (DRR) framework which we have been actively working on, which enables the standardization and automation of regulatory reporting for derivative transactions across multiple jurisdictions. JPM presented his journey implementing DRR for ASIC and MAS jurisdictions, which presents an interesting use case for other banks to follow.
Another highlight of the event was the presentation of several projects aimed at integrating the CDM workflow into Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) platforms to improve settlement efficiency in post-trade operations. This integration holds the potential to bring the industry closer to T+1 settlement, significantly enhancing operational efficiency, which is an essential milestone in the accelerated financial markets. After the presentations, we had the opportunity to do some networking before leaving to catch the last flight of the day back to Barcelona. We left the event with a strong sense of satisfaction, having witnessed the increasing interest from industry participants and the remarkable progress being made with the CDM model. It is truly exciting to see our work gaining recognition and to realize that we are moving ever closer to a globally standardized financial landscape through the adoption of CDM.
We eagerly look forward to participating in the next edition of the CDM Showcase, where we anticipate even greater advancements with real functional use-cases of CDM and future successes.
