Multilateral Transparency for Security Markets Through DLT

For decades, changing technology and policy choices have worked to fragment securities markets, rendering them so dark that neither ownership nor real-time price of securities are generally visible to all parties multilaterally. The policies in the U.S. National Market System and the EU Market in Financial Instruments Directive— together with universal adoption of the indirect holding system— have pushed Western securities markets into a corner from which escape to full transparency has seemed either impossible or prohibitively expensive. Although the reader has a right to skepticism given the exaggerated promises surrounding blockchain in recent years, we demonstrate in this paper that distributed ledger technology (DLT) contains the potential to convert fragmented securities markets back to multilateral transparency. Leading markets generally lack transparency in two ways that derive from their basic structure: (1) multiple platforms on which trades in the same security are matched have separate bid/ask queues and are not consolidated in real time (fragmented pricing), and (2) highspeed transfers of securities are enabled by placing ownership of the securities in financial institutions, thus preventing transparent ownership (depository or street name ownership). The distributed nature of DLT allows multiple copies of the same pricing queue to be held simultaneously by a large number of order-matching platforms, curing the problem of fragmented pricing. This same distributed nature of DLT would allow the issuers of securities to be nodes in a DLT network, returning control over securities ownership and transfer to those issuers and thus, restoring transparent ownership through direct holding with the issuer. A serious objection to DLT is that its latency is very high—with each Bitcoin blockchain transaction taking up to ten minutes. To remedy this, we first propose a private network without cumbersome proof-of-work cryptography. Second, we introduce into our model the quickly evolving technology of “lightning networks,” which are advanced two-layer off-chain networks conducting high-speed transacting with only periodic memorialization in the permanent DLT network. Against the background of existing securities trading and settlement, this Article demonstrates that a DLT network could bring multilateral transparency and thus represent the next step in evolution for markets in their current configuration

Corporate Bond Market in India: Current Scope and Future Challenges

The capital market of an economy is considered to be well developed, only when a parallel development is ensured both in the equity and the debt segment. There is no doubt that the equity market in India is quite well developed and plays a crucial role in the growth of Indian economy. At the same time, Govt. debt market in India has also experienced a tremendous growth in the last decade. But unlike Govt. bonds, the corporate debt segment in India is still in the nascent stage and requires lot of initiatives to bring it to the Global standard. Bonds of different tenors issued by Central or State Governments and other PSUs capture more than 80 percent of the total debt market volume in India. Therefore, it has become very important to have a well run and liquid corporate bond market that can play a critical role in supporting economic development in India, both at the macroeconomic and microeconomic levels. Massive future growth in infrastructure, as required to achieve the higher GDP growth, can only be ensured through availability of long-term financing and also at a reasonable cost. Due to several issues, applicable to several market players, bank financing is not the right choice to meet all the financing needs to facilitate such growth. A well developed corporate bond market can be the optimal alternative, not only to support the financing requirement for infrastructural development, but also to relieve banks from all the problems of long-term financing, and spreading out the huge financing risk to a wider investor base to strengthen India’s bank-based financial system, to allow corporate borrowers to tap the low cost market, to enable investors including FIIs to earn fixed but higher returns, and above all to ensure overall growth of the economy. The present study analyze the existing structure of Indian corporate bond market, vis-à-vis the other developed markets, and attempted to explain the movements and changes taken place in Indian debt market during the last decade, may be as a result of several regulatory initiatives. The importance of an well developed corporate bond market for various groups of Indian financial sector, followed by the important factor contributing to the inferior growth of such market, supported by several facts and figures, are discussed in the study. It has been finally observed that, even if some changes have taken place to strengthen Indian corporate debt market, the market has a significant scope to contribute to the overall growth of Indian economy, but obviously subject to some very important and stringent initiatives from the Government and the concerned regulatory bodies

An Assessment of the Capacity and Financial Performance of Microfinance Institutions: The Philippine Case

Despite the government’s credit program approach, access of poor households to microfinancial services has remained limited. This paper explains the microfinance policy environment in the Philippines and evaluates the institutional and financial capacity/performance constraints of MFIs. This also addresses four areas that will allow MFIs to be self-sustaining financial institutions for the poor.microfinance, poverty alleviation, microfinance institutions

An Assessment of the Capacity and Financial Performance of Microfinance Institutions: The Philippine Case

Despite the government’s credit program approach, access of poor households to microfinancial services has remained limited. This paper explains the microfinance policy environment in the Philippines and evaluates the institutional and financial capacity/performance constraints of MFIs. This also addresses four areas that will allow MFIs to be self-sustaining financial institutions for the poor.microfinance, poverty alleviation, microfinance institutions

Solutions for Impact Investors: From Strategy to Implementation

In writing this monograph, our main goal is to provide impact investors with tools to tighten the link between their investment decisions and impact creation. Our intent is threefold: to attract more capital to impact investing; to assist impact investors as they move from organizational change to executing and refining their impact investment decision-making process; and to narrow the gap within foundations between program professionals and investment professionals thereby contributing to a mutual understanding and implementation of a portfolio approach to impact investing.Additionally, we intend to help break down the barriers making it difficult to identify opportunities in impact investing. To this end, we provide examples throughout the monograph and at www.rockpa.org/impactinvesting of impact investment opportunities in most major asset classes.While we understand the important role that impact investors can play in providing financial capital, we also want to acknowledge the wide range of non-financial resources needed to address the world's problems. Our intent with this monograph is not to provide a comprehensive list of investments across asset classes nor any type of investment advice with regard to the selected profiles. We strongly encourage the reader to conduct their own assessment and evaluation for risk and suitability before considering any investment

Rational models for inflation-linked derivatives

We construct models for the pricing and risk management of inflation-linked derivatives. The models are rational in the sense that linear payoffs written on the consumer price index have prices that are rational functions of the state variables. The nominal pricing kernel is constructed in a multiplicative manner that allows for closed-form pricing of vanilla inflation products suchlike zero-coupon swaps, year-on-year swaps, caps and floors, and the exotic limited-price-index swap. We study the conditions necessary for the multiplicative nominal pricing kernel to give rise to short rate models for the nominal interest rate process. The proposed class of pricing kernel models retains the attractive features of a nominal multicurve interest rate model, such as closed-form pricing of nominal swaptions, and it isolates the so-called inflation convexity-adjustment term arising from the covariance between the underlying stochastic drivers. We conclude with examples of how the model can be calibrated to EUR data. Read More: https://epubs.siam.org/doi/10.1137/18M123576

Finance, Competition, Instability, and Development Microfoundations and Financial Scaffolding of the Economy

The present paper attempts to utilize “the knowledge-based” nature of firms’ operations as set out in the diverse theoretical frameworks to stress the importance of organisational and managerial techniques in the creation of market dominance by particular financial firms in the same way that these theories have analysed industrial firms. The article will also analyze the process of competition between different firms and between different financial structures in terms of the impact of different organisational regimes on profitability, efficiency, and instability of the economic system. As the result, the diverse policy recommendations concerning financial regulation, institution building, and microfinancial structure are given.

ASSET ALLOCATION IN EUROPE Reality vs. Expectations. ECMI Task Force Report April 2020

In Europe, capital markets are expected to play a more prominent role in corporate financing, retail/institutional saving/investment and private risk-sharing altogether. In the current institutional cycle, CMU remains as relevant as ever. However, it needs rethinking at EU level and real commitment from member states. The capacity of capital markets to enhance the resilience of our societies as a whole, especially when confronted with unprecedented shocks, should certainly be given more thorough consideration. In order to contribute to the public debate, CEPS and ECMI invited relevant stakeholders– policymakers, supervisors, consumer associations, industry representatives, and academics – to take part in a dedicated Task Force on “Asset Allocation in Europe: What challenges and opportunities lie ahead?”. The main objective of our initiative was to explore meaningful ways of activating long-term savings and investment channels across the EU, with a focus on households, asset/fund managers, insurers and pension funds, under the overarching theme of sustainability in the real economy. The recent developments related to COVID-19 were also taken into account. To this end, we invite you to read the analytical sections in this final report as well as the accompanying list of recommendations

Longevity Risk and Capital Markets: The 2018-19 Update

This Special Issue of the Annals of Actuarial Science contains 12 contributions to the academic literature all dealing with longevity risk and capital markets. Draft versions of the papers were presented at Longevity 14: The Fourteenth International Longevity Risk and Capital Markets Solutions Conference that was held in Amsterdam on 20-21 September 2018. It was hosted by the Pensions Institute at Cass Business School and the Netspar Network for Studies on Pensions, Ageing and Retirement