EquiLend 1Source Initiative Unveiled to Eradicate Reconciliations Using Distributed Ledger Technology​

NEW YORK, LONDON AND HONG KONG (July 13, 2022)—EquiLend, the global financial technology, data and analytics company for the securities finance industry, today announced the EquiLend 1Source initiative, which aims to resolve the industry’s central pain points and risks, develop state-of-the-art technological solutions and efficiently transform the industry.

EquiLend 1Source was born out of the EquiLend-convened Digital Transformation Working Group, consisting of many of the most influential securities finance firms globally, which was tasked with identifying key challenges facing the industry.

At its core, the initiative aims to harness emerging technologies, such as distributed ledger, to develop an industry-wide “single source of truth” for transaction lifecycles in the securities finance industry. EquiLend 1Source takes a future-proof approach, enabling EquiLend to solve some of the industry’s most immediate concerns while preparing firms for additional developments and innovations to come.

The first undertaking of the EquiLend 1Source initiative will be to develop a means to eradicate reconciliation breaks and resulting settlement failures, which were identified by the working group as the most pressing issue in the industry due to their disruptive nature and high costs.

The intended result is a centralized platform that:

● Serves as a single source of truth for securities finance lifecycle events and a universal source of data for the industry,

● Establishes operating procedures that produce predictable and consistent results for participants,

● Maintains a central record of the agreements made between parties, and;

● Disseminates changes to all systems that maintain a copy of the shared truth

The solution is currently in the design phase along with Working Group members, with substantial commitment to the initiative from across the securities finance industry.

The single source of truth will be open to all market participants and interoperable with any vendor, utility or other party interested in connecting.

Brian Lamb, CEO of EquiLend, said: “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rethink the use of resources in securities finance. EquiLend 1Source will result in extraordinary savings industry-wide through technological efficiencies and the opportunity to redeploy human capital into more productive and profitable workstreams.”

Ken DeGiglio, Chief Information Officer of EquiLend, said: “For years, the securities finance industry has addressed the symptoms of its costs and inefficiencies rather than attacking the root cause. The EquiLend 1Source initiative presents the opportunity to implement new technologies that can allow the industry to completely reimagine how platforms work and share information, how counterparties interact and how true, single-source data can be experienced.”