The digital transformation of the securities business in the Frankfurt financial centre is moving forward swiftly. Deutsche Börse’s issuance platform – known as D7 – has surpassed the issuance milestone of one million. Five years ago, Deutsche Börse began concrete preparations, and in 2022, the first security was issued via D7. The platform offers a digital alternative to traditional physical issuance. Customers can digitise financial products while accessing both existing central and decentralised infrastructures and markets. The total volume of securities brought to market via the platform has now reached 22 billion euros, reports Stephanie Eckermann, the board member responsible for post-trade at Deutsche Börse.

Post-trade, in particular, is often still characterised by labour-intensive manual processes. This is where digitalisation proves beneficial, as it enhances efficiency, scalability, and security, emphasises Eckermann. D7 plays a crucial role in this transformation, reducing the time required for issuance drastically – from two days to just a few seconds.

The fact that the platform has now taken on substantial volume demonstrates that D7 is no longer in an experimental phase but is fully in the scaling process. Investment house Vontobel, for instance, issues a large number of products via D7, as the high speed of issuance facilitates the marketing of innovative products.

The largest issuer on D7 in terms of volume is KfW. Melanie Kehr, the board member responsible for IT, operations, and transaction management at KfW, praises the platform’s reliability. The promotional bank, one of the largest issuers of short- and long-term debt securities, has already issued more than 10 billion euros via D7 this year – „and it’s only the beginning of April.“ A reliable market infrastructure strengthens Frankfurt’s competitiveness as a financial hub, asserts Kehr. She additionally notes that German lawmakers have supported the digitalisation of the securities business with the Electronic Securities Act.

DZ Bank board member Souâd Benkredda also commends domestic regulators, who have been pioneers in the area of centralised register securities. However, the journey is not yet complete. The next step is to explore how decentralised networks can further enhance efficiency. Benkredda points to the issuance of commercial paper, where settlement has been conducted using distributed ledger technology.