PostTrade 360° Stockholm 2023

Gabriel Vimberg, Investor Services, SEB

This year, let’s set the scene for the conference with the real-life operational aspects in focus – and what better speaker to help us reflect than Storebrand’s Arne Martin Moen! Drawing the lines to connect the current bulletpoints on his own 2023 agenda, with some of the general trends out there in the investment-operations universe, what are the patterns that emerge?

Arne Martin Moen, Chief Operating Officer, Storebrand Asset Management

As Europe Head of Citi’s securities services, Alex Todd is in a good position to sketch the main traits of the landscape in 2023, the way they look from the provider’s perspective. What insights will be the most important to bear in mind for industry professionals?

Alex Todd, Managing Director, Europe Head, Securities Services, Citi

Ann-Kristin Fessé, Head of Commercial Financial Institutions, Euroclear Sweden

As banks and many institutional clients are re-establishing themselves on cloud architectures, a new world of service capabilities opens. Real-time data sharing between financial institutions, for example, is already producing concrete benefits. In this session, learn how SEB’s Investor Services explores new ways of working – to future-proof its IT and make its service development faster and better.

Martina Wallenberg, Head of R&D and Transformation, SEB

Niklas Nyberg, Head of Institutional Global Custody, SEB

As Europe’s largest marketplace operator, Euronext, has launched its own pan-European clearinghouse business, and as the EU has encouraged the move of clearing in some asset classes from London to the continent post-Brexit (notably to Deutsche Börse-owned Eurex for derivatives such as interest rate swaps), the competitive map has been redrawn. Let’s have a look at it.

Moderator: Juha Sternberg, Derivatives Execution and Clearing, Nordic Region, BNP Paribas

Panellists:

Tim Beckwith, Head of Commercial & Business Development, Cboe Clear Europe

José Manuel Ortiz-Repiso, Head of Clearing & Repo Operations, SIX

Eric Bey, Head of Clearing Services, Euronext

Attention on corporate governance has never been so critical and regulation continues to drive change as regulators look to grow shareholder democracy. With the prominence of ESG investment strategies, increasing investor appetite, two years of SRD II and a finreg melting pot that includes SFDR, CMU and CSRD, the industry can expect the volume of voting at general meetings to increase year on year. This will require participants in the investment lifecycle to adopt the harmonization and interoperability agenda in order to achieve further automation.

Moderator:  Virginie O’Shea, CEO & Founder, Firebrand Research

Panellists:

Flemming Merring, Senior Product Manager, Euronext Securities

Scott Grant, Director – Business Change, Broadridge 

Political incentives are helping (or forcing, some might say) more market participants, and a broader range of assets, to find their way into the clearinghouses. In what areas are volumes and liquidity developing? What benefits – and remaining headaches – are in users’ focus?

Moderator:

Jacob Westermark, Head of Clearing, Collateral & CLS Services, Swedbank

Panellists:

Brendon Bambury, Head of Sales and Relationship Management (UK, Nordics & Benelux), SIX

Joanne Donaghey, Regional Sales Director, LCH

With cost pressures increasing and expectations about value creation shifting, custodians have transformed themselves. Becoming diverse department stores, they offer a variety of solutions to answer any needs that may arise. Increasingly, they seek to provide diverse technical capabilities and operational insights, in both an integrated and tailored manner. What is the next step in the evolution, how will custodians differentiate themselves, and what can expect as future client value propositions?

Camille Papillard, Head of Financial Intermediaries and Corporate Client Line EMEA, Securities Services, BNP Paribas 

Henrik Ohlsen, Head of Nordic Client Relations & Sales, Euronext Securities

At last count, there are an estimated 140 ESG data providers in the market, providing the buy side with thousands of datasets to choose from. But with more data come more shapes, formats and attributes, threatening the investment operations' mandate to achieve scale and drive efficiency. Has anyone cracked the code for addressing the ESG integration and data management challenge? And if so, can it be done across use cases and functions that span the entire investment lifecycle? We'll examine where we are as an industry and how we got here, and most importantly, where we have the opportunity to solve this universal puzzle at scale.

Jock Nielson, EMEA Data Solutions Sales, J.P.Morgan

Cloud connectivity, DLT, regulation and fee pressures are only some of the many drivers behind the technological innovation and system investments in the post-trade area. With new offers, upcoming “fintechs” can seem to challenge incumbent asset servicing firms and their traditional system providers in some areas. But, at the same time, many new alliances are built for shared gain – for example with custodians adding new third-party services as plugins, offering mutual clients a shortcut to system integration. 

The emerging map can be difficult to navigate not only for the providers themselves, but not least also for firms on the user side. What are the new services and offers that will cause most change to the everyday work of operations professionals across the investments industry? How will these services be delivered/accessed? And what advice would the experts give to firms who consider endorsing new technical capabilities, in some different situations?

Moderator:  Virginie O’Shea, Founder, Firebrand Research

Panellists:

Rebecca Hope, Head of Client Platform Experience and Engagement, Citi

Alan Cameron, Head of Client Line Advisory, Securities Services,  BNP Paribas 

Dean Little, Co-Founder, Proxymity

Matt Digby, Head of Business Development & Partnerships, AccessFintech

Tom Casteleyn, Head of Custody EMEA, J.P. Morgan

Clearinghouse representatives will calmly tell us how even the most volatile markets (such as in the Coronavirus crisis) are safely managed within their business-as-usual processes. Yet, a market headache can strike suddenly, and on the rare occasion that it would rattle a large CCP or a large cross-CCP trading firm, it could get really bad. On global level, the Financial Stability Board is considering tougher requirements on the CCPs to cover a larger part of losses upon a clearing member’s default (an idea that is controversial with the CCPs but supported by many of the trading actors).

So, after all the shoring up that has taken place in the global trading system since the 2008 crisis, what can we predict or guess about our next disaster – and how should market participants build constant resilience into their operations to brace for this unknown but expectable-sooner-or-later misery?

Moderator : Sean Tuffy, Industry Expert

Panellists:

Dhruve Bhavsar, Head of Risk, Equities, RepoCLear & CaLM Business Risk, LCH

Vikesh Patel, President, Cboe Clear Europe

Haroun Boucheta, Head of Public Affairs, Securities Services, BNP Paribas

After a year’s preparation, an initiative by SEB on digital assets (in collaboration with another European bank) is approaching its first bond issuance this spring, with a not-yet-announced bond issuer. Hear the team representatives describe how the project is being set up, and what considerations have shaped it – including the bank’s long-term strategy.

After a close look at regulatory frameworks, this first issue will be performed from Luxembourg. With securities DLT raising regulatory questions just as much as technical ones, this session will discuss why this is so, where the wind is blowing, and what practicalities Sweden must still get in place to support the vision of a maximum-efficient future infrastructure.

Johan Hörmark, Investment Banking Business Development, SEB
Sahand Javidi, Investor Services Business Development, SEB

Gabriel Vimberg, Investor Services, SEB

Göran Fors, Deputy Head of Investor Services, SEB

Colin Parry’s reign as CEO of the International Securities Services Association (ISSA) since 2019 has seen it reinforce its role, and its list of executive board members reads as a who’s-who of the global industry. (His background before that includes 24 years with UBS.) Meet Colin in Stockholm for a session to highlight the key trends and drivers that set the frame for what we do as service users or providers.

Under the fee pressure on traditional securities services, providers have done their best to expand their offers of adjacent value-adding services and get paid for doing so, while constraining the expense lines. However, there are a number of forces shaping the industry which offer both hope and challenges to the profitability of the industry. ISSA is revising its seminal paper from 2020 and would like to engage the audience in debate on those macro forces and listen to its views.

Colin Parry, CEO, International Securities Services Association

Moderator: Göran Fors, Deputy Head of Investor Services, SEB

Panellists:

Colin Parry, Chief Executive Officer, ISSA - International Securities Services Association

Ross Whitehill, Chief Executive Officer, Thomas Murray

At PostTrade 360° Stockholm 2022, deputy governor Martin Flodén described Riksbanken’s reasons for initiating a Swedish move towards adopting the EU’s T2S settlement platform, which would open Sweden’s settlement market for more actors than today’s single one. (That session is here.) Sweden had lagged behind on harmonisation, he stated. So how have preparations continued behind the scenes in the year since then?

Moderator:  Urban Funered, CEO, Swedish Securities Markets Association

Panellists:

Roger Storm, CEO, Euroclear Sweden

Göran Fors, Deputy Head of Investor Services, SEB

Ola Mjorud, Nordic Securities Services Head, Citi

Boon-Hiong Chan, Head of Fund Services and Head of Securities Market & Technology Advocacy, Deutsche Bank

Interviews with leaders from 50 public asset owner institutions, holding 9 trillion dollars, went into a recent study by BNY Mellon, tells EMEA COO Christine Mikolajuk. The report reveals that they are seeking to be bolder and more creative in their search for yield, and that they are ready to challenge and change every element of their operations. More than half of the covered institutions are already underway with operational transformations. In this session, learn how and why.

Christine Mikolajuk, Chief Operating Officer, Global Client Management, EMEA, BNY Mellon

Paula Avraamides, Client Executive, Nordics, BNY Mellon

It used to depend on the salary. Now, increasingly, post trade leaders report how the profiles they seek just aren’t out there to be found. And while automation takes care of ever-more heavy lifting, the skills profile to manage it can be quite different from that which helped a team member join the industry a long time ago.

So where are we going on this? Who is the investment operations professional of today, and tomorrow? How are employers tackling the talent squeeze, and what do we have on the plate to tempt young prospects with a view to a good career that could last into the 2060s?

Before the full discussion, the session will kick off with a quick summary of insights from a fresh interview survey with a large number of women in the industry, performed by the Swedish Securities Markets Association.

Moderator: Urban Funered, CEO, Swedish Securities Markets Association

Panellists: 

Susanna Drakenberg, Head of HR, Euroclear Sweden

Saija Korkala, Head of Investor Services Institutions, SEB

Shaun Ogden, Recruitment Consultant, Amendo

For many of us, certain AI-powered software releases for public use have led to a flood of computer-created content in our social-media accounts in this last year, as the outcome is often spectacular. On a massive scale, servers and laptops are now churning out human-style texts (such as by ChatGPT), images (Stable Diffusion), and video. (Some months into life with ChatGPT, it is already common that school kids let it write their hand-ins, with schools and universities struggling to detect the difference.) Even artificially composed music is spreading commercially and, since some years, general AI beats dedicated chess computers at chess. 

Naturally, the role of our post-trade workplaces is less avant-garde. Yet, increasingly, AI-powered software asks us to confirm or decline its proposals for mapping numbers from loose-form incoming PDFs and emails into our accounting or other databases, and loads of other applications are coming in. A lot of salary cost could be saved from digitizing routine tasks, or so many hope or fear. 

So how do we make sense of what we are seeing? What is the big pattern, and how should we plan for our own journeys to integrate the revolutionising new technology into our operations? This session starts with a thought-provoking general outlook, then narrows down to our own industry context by concrete example.

Mats Lewan, Futurist, Speaker, Moderator, Author, Journalist

Regulatory and tax requirements, for example in fund operations, are a constant challenge. Let’s look at how efficient data practices can support.

Jacob Gertel, Head Content Management Legal & Compliance Data, Financial Information, SIX

Largely, corporate bonds can be a great instrument both for the investors and the companies who issue them. But liquidity can be scarce at times, as was seen at the outbreak of the pandemic. The problem exists across Europe but for this session we zoom in on Sweden.

The liquidity is also linked (in a somewhat complex way) with the issue of market transparency, which MiFID II and MiFIR were meant to improve but actually got worse. In Sweden, a self-regulation initiative under the Swedish Securities Markets Association aims to fix it. Fredrik Bonthron joins us to give us an overview of the scene, as well as a current update. 

Fredrik Bonthron, Chief Economist, Swedish Securities Markets Association

The EU requires climate action, while 10 US states have legislated against it. Sustainability certifications have been developed, but what exactly do they require – and can I be punished if I honestly misinterpret the criteria?

As the hunt-down on “greenwashing” practices has intensified (with the mid-2022 raid at DWS as an extreme event), asset managers are developing more rigorous and standardised methods and product categorisations. What’s their approach?

Moderator: Alan Goodrich, Regional Sales Manager - Benelux, Nordics, Baltics & SEE, ERI BANCAIRE

Panellists:

Therese Niklasson, Global Head of Sustainable Investment, Newton Investment Management

Benjamin Schofield, Director, Product Strategy and Commercialisation Regulatory and Compliance, Sustainalytics

Göran Fors, Deputy Head of Investor Services, SEB