SNB: Thomas Jordan, for an adaptation of the system to the … – Romandie.com

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SNB: Thomas Jordan, for adapting the system to new technologies

Geneva (awp) – The swiss national Bank (SNB) is following closely the technological developments that are radically changing the infrastructure of financial markets, but notes that the primary functions of the financial industry remain largely unchanged. Investment financing, investment of assets, custody of securities and execution of payments are still at the heart of the remit of the financial intermediaries, has listed the chairman, Thomas Jordan, in the text of his speech to the conference, Sibos, 2016 in Geneva.

The innovations concern mainly the way in which these services are offered to the customer. Mr. Jordan notes in this regard that if the scanning of the traffic of payments has allowed them to make trade without cash that’s less expensive, the optimization potential has not yet been exhausted, including in international payments.

The boss of the guarantor of the monetary stability, the swiss stressed that after years of centralisation, which have led to the creation of the system of centralized payment transactions via Swiss Interbank Clearing (SIC), the new registers distributed (the”distributed ledger”) or the technology called the “blockchain” would result in cost savings by eliminating the use of intermediaries.

These new modes of exchange, however, must still make their evidence in relation to infrastructure conventional already very competitive.

If the SNB is closely following these developments, in order to ensure the safety and the efficiency of the SIC system, it recalls that its operations remain within the remit of SIX Interbank Clearing. The last iteration of the SIC, presented in April, “has a computer architecture which makes the maintenance and further development of innovative services that are more flexible and less expensive than in the past,” says Mr. Jordan.

This flexibility illustrates, according to the central banker the hankering for a reduction of barriers to entry on the market of the developers of technologies in the financial (fintech), for which the supervisory Authority of financial markets (FINMA) wishes the creation of a new authorization.

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(AWP / 26.09.2016 12h01)