Quick Take

• Citi’s second Securities Services Evolution white paper shows that distributed ledger technology is becoming increasingly mainstream among financial market infrastructures and global market participants.
• Most of those surveyed, 88%, told Citi that their organizations are either actively participating in or exploring digital assets or DLT.

Distributed ledger technology (DLT) is becoming increasingly mainstream among financial market infrastructures and global market participants, according to a new Citi white paper.

Most of those surveyed, 88%, told Citi that their organizations are either actively participating in or exploring digital assets or DLT. A bigger percentage, 92%, said tokenization benefits market liquidity and tradable-asset variety.

More than half said market infrastructure based on distributed ledger technology could reduce post-trade processing costs by 10% to 30%. Additionally, 79% of respondents said atomic settlement may be achievable in less than 10 years.

“We are seeing a greater sense of momentum and purpose in all developments across the industry, in particular the determination to move to a T+1 settlement cycle," Okan Pekin, global head of securities services at Citi, said in an email. "Delivering these changes will be no small feat but in due course offer the prospect of very substantial cost savings and efficiencies."

Citi's second Securities Services Evolution white paper includes quantitative and qualitative data from 12 financial market infrastructures and almost 300 market participants from banks, broker-dealers, asset managers, custodians and institutional investors.