The deal, which is to drive the development of digital post-trade infrastructure, will see the business rebranded as DTCC Digital Assets.
DTCC has closed on the transaction to acquire Securrency, a developer of institutional-grade, digital asset infrastructure. DTCC announced the signing of the definitive agreement to acquire Securrency in October.
With the acquisition complete, DTCC will retire the Securrency brand, and has renamed the business DTCC Digital Assets. It will operate as a business within DTCC, reporting into chief information officer Lynn Bishop.
Nadine Chakar, CEO of Securrency, joins DTCC as managing director and global head of DTCC Digital Assets, reporting to Bishop. Chakar will also join the DTCC Management Committee. In addition, Dan Doney, CTO and founder of Securrency, will also join DTCC, along with COO and co-founder John Hensel and around 100 other employees.
“We are excited to bring together our people, expertise and respective technologies to create a powerful combination that will help the industry unlock the value of digital assets and drive market-wide transformation,” said Frank La Salla, DTCC president, CEO and director.
“Securrency is an important strategic acquisition that will give us the technology to drive market-wide transformation by enabling end-to-end digital lifecycle processing for tokenized assets, digital currencies and other financial instruments. By bringing together DTCC’s commitment to providing market stability and our unparalleled network of financial market participants with the sophistication of the Securrency technology, we will be in a leading position to unlock the value of digital assets and help guide the industry through its digital transformation journey. We believe this next generation of financial market infrastructure will further reduce settlement times, facilitate market transparency and risk management, enhance regulatory oversight and controls, and unlock efficiency and innovation to create an improved investor experience.”
By combining DTCC’s digital capabilities and Securrency’s technology, DTCC hopes to fast-track the development of its enterprise digital asset platform to unlock the power of institutional DeFi. DTCC will leverage the technology over time to embed digital assets within its existing products and services, develop new, regulatory-compliant blockchain-based offerings and explore use cases with the industry, including buyside asset managers, broker-dealers and custodians, to collaborate on new DTCC blockchain-based solutions.
In addition, DTCC plans to license Securrency technology to the wider market, offering professional services to help firms transform and evolve their operating models – similar to how WisdomTree currently licenses Securrency’s software as part of the infrastructure for its WisdomTree Prime offering, which provides tokenized assets and funds via digital wallets for retail investors and consumers.
DTCC also hopes to provide global leadership to foster industry-wide collaboration to help avoid fragmentation with different digital technologies and standards. Securrency’s technology can address this issue by acting as a DLT-agnostic harmonization layer that promotes interoperability, liquidity, transparency and security.
La Salla said, “We look forward to building on our past work to drive consensus around the standards, controls and frameworks necessary to support regulatory-compliant digital asset solutions and development of the right architecture and infrastructure to ensure widespread interoperability. We’re excited to welcome our new colleagues to the DTCC team and to begin collaborating as a group to strengthen market stability and resilience and drive greater efficiencies, productivity, risk mitigation and liquidity in the global financial markets.”
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