Co-organised together with the Treasury Markets Association (TMA) and the Financial Services Development Council (FSDC), as well as supported by Asia Securities Industry & Financial Market Association (ASIFMA), the Euroclear Asia Collateral Conference 2023 – Connecting today for the road ahead – returned to Hong Kong on 30 November 2023.
Asia Collateral Conference 2023
HKMA Auditorium - Hong Kong - 30 November
This flagship conference brought together over 200 senior representatives of the collateral management and securities finance market and provided the opportunity to explore the most challenging issues facing our industry.
Howard Lee, Deputy Chief Executive, Hong Kong Monetary Authority gave the keynote speech, outlining the vision of the future development of the Central Money markets Unit (CMU), the central securities depository (CSD) for debt securities owned and operated by the Hong King Monetary Authority (HKMA). Building on the successful launch of the collateralised 1 ending service in 2022, the CMU provides various collateral management solutions to help market participants with liquidity demand and seeks to continue to develop its service going forward. Mr Lee focused on how the CMU can become a gateway for the region and support the liquidity and eligibility of Chinese bonds in particular.
Olivier Grimonpont, Managing Director, Head of Product Management, Market Liquidity at Euroclear, gave an update on how Euroclear’s Collateral Highway brings together Asia’s various markets, respecting their unique characteristics, their local needs and regulations, whilst integrating them into the global marketplace with our secure ecosystem.
Olivier highlighted that Asia now represents over 20% of collateral activities and the addition of Yulan bonds and plans for Thai domestic bonds are set to further increase opportunities in the region. Central Bank Access is a major initiative and Euroclear is working with the Korea Securities Depository to make KTBs Euroclearable, an important and exciting development.
Improvements to CCP margining, the move to T+1 and many other projects underpin Euroclear’s commitment to providing innovative solutions and help support Asian market development.
- Repo landscape in APAC
The repo panel highlighted how Asian repo markets rival both European and US repo markets in terms of sophistication with volumes driven by both liquidity and risk management considerations. The need for collateral for IM and the return to longer term trades are observed trends and the future will see increased globalisation and more innovative local solutions.
- Securities Lending
With global markets absorbing the fastest series of interest rates hikes in modern history, the panel focused on how innovative securities financing solutions are releasing valuable liquidity into the system. New developments, new products, new solutions, as the market responds to the new environment of ‘higher and longer’ interest rates.
And to round off the event, the audience took part in an interactive survey on hot topics on ESG, still a highly complex topic with many challenges with its global implementation, especially in the areas of ESG definitions and standardisation. We are grateful to the audience for sharing their views and providing feedback on which topics are most important to them.
It was a truly amazing event full of joy and happiness and which continue to grow each year and we thank everyone for their outstanding support.
Watch this space for more news from the event and for information about next year’s event.
