National Settlement Depository (NSD) has taken part in Finopolis, a forum for innovative financial technologies. The event was organized by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. The forum brought together financial companies, corporations, and banks focused on upgrading the accessibility of financial services and instruments and implementing advanced technologies and solutions on the financial market.
Eddie Astanin, Chairman of the Executive Board, NSD, participated in the session “Digital Currencies and Their Regulation.” Olga Skorobogatova, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Russia, moderated the session. Session participants, including representatives of major innovative companies and the regulator, discussed different countries’ approaches to working with digital currencies, as well as scenarios for developing and regulating digital currencies in Russia for the next five years.
In his report, Eddie Astanin stressed that NSD has used a pragmatic and action-oriented approach to FinTech. In 2016, the depository tested e-proxy voting technology for conducting bond holders’ meetings. This was a successful experience. In 2017, NSD, together with Raiffeisenbank and MegaFon, carried out settlements on commercial bonds via the blockchain-based platform. The next development stage will be the creation of a system for the safekeeping and record keeping of digital assets via interactions with the Waves platform (if an appropriate legislative framework for this category of assets will be adopted).
At the forum, the Bank of Russia presented a few ideas which were strategically important for NSD.
Sergey Shvetsov, First Deputy Governor of the Bank of Russia, pointed out the importance of creating Russia’s record keeping platform with marketplace functions which could identify a person remotely, register his/her transactions, inform tax authorities about them, and act as a financial supermarket. Potentially, such a project might be implemented on the basis of National Settlement Depository.
Eddie Astanin, Chairman of the Executive Board, NSD, added: “National Settlement Depository has experience developing infrastructure platforms on a national scale: the Valuation Center, the CSD, the repository, the platform for UIT units distribution and repayment, and the payment system – these are implemented services, and they make the creation of a unified record keeping platform strategically important for us."