London, 15 June 2023

Leading the way in facilitating a scalable digital securities ecosystem for institutional capital markets through Distributed Ledger Technology and Smart Contracts

agora Digital Capital Markets (“agora”), the creator of the pre-issuance workflow collaboration tool - agoraPlatform, and Montis Group (“Montis”), a pioneer in Central Security Depository (CSD) utilities for digital securities, have agreed a strategic partnership to create an end-to-end platform for conventional and digital securities in the highly regulated fixed income markets.

agora and Montis are pleased to announce that agoraPlatform will interoperate with the Montis DLT-based applicant CSD which is targeting authorisation and operational Go-Live for Q4, 2023. This will create a solution that is relevant for the streamlined interaction from originating, issuing, recording, holding, through to settling conventional, non-native, and natively digital securities tokens.

agora’s pre-trade workflow tool in the syndicated bond markets enables issuers and banks to remove friction from the origination stage of the issuance process. This allows participants to communicate more seamlessly, handle documentation in a digitally native way thereby limiting the need for manual intervention, reducing operational risk, and diminishing data reconciliation errors.

The Montis core CSD services for debt and equity products, incorporates an innovative private blockchain, Archax Exchange and SWIFT connectivity, access to central bank money settlement, interoperability, and cross-chaining between external permissioned blockchains and integration with market participants across multiple financial market ecosystems.

Combining the pre-trade capabilities of agora with the Montis post-trade digital infrastructure represents a significant milestone in driving financial innovation and technological advancements in conventional and digital securities within institutional capital markets. By combining their expertise and cutting-edge solutions, the two companies are poised to shape the future of digital securities and transform the financial landscape by creating a truly end to end environment for both conventional and digital securities.

"We are excited to collaborate with Montis Group, combining our unique capabilities to create a market evolution for all in a truly end-to-end platform," said Charlie Berman CEO of agora Digital Capital Markets. "By leveraging distributed ledger technology and smart contracts, and collaboration with other market participants, we will pave the way for a seamless integration of conventional and digital assets in a correctly regulated manner."

Martin Watkins, CEO of Montis Digital added, "The tokenisation of digital securities is at an inflection point as financial institutions respond to meet rapidly growing demand and regulators and legislators adapt to the phenomenon of digital finance. Our partnership with agora exemplifies our commitment to deliver the market infrastructure required for digital securities to fulfil their true potential, in a scalable manner. Together, we will drive innovation and support the growth of digitisation and DLT adoption across capital markets."

About agora Digital Capital Markets

The agoraPlatform, by leveraging distributed ledger technology and smart contracts, creates efficiencies throughout the pre-trade and post-trade processes of a transaction’s life cycle; ultimately, allowing bankers to spend more time on value-add work, such as relationship management or market monitoring, rather than administrative processes.

The agoraPlatform enables issuers and banks to remove friction from the origination stage of the issuance process, by allowing participants to communicate more seamlessly, handle documentation in a digitally native way and therefore limit the need for manual intervention and reduce operational risk of mistakes in data reconciliation. The agoraPlatform creates an immutable record of all activities on the platform, as well as provides a permissioned and secure environment to deal with sensitive data in a compliant way thanks to leveraging the distributed ledger technology. By improving the efficiency of the origination, the agoraPlatform allows market participants to spend less time on managing the process and dedicate more time towards relationships with clients and monitoring the market. Today, agoraPlatform is applied to Structured Products, Syndicated Bonds and Medium-Term Notes; using its Asset Code Engine (a low code proprietary development platform), the agoraPlatform and its functionality can be deployed to adjacent asset classes quickly and cost effectively both in private and public distributed ledger environments.

For more information visit: https://www.agoradcm.com

About Montis Group

Montis Group Limited, is the digital Financial Markets Infrastructure (dFMI) subsidiary of Archax, the first-ever FCA-regulated digital securities exchange, broker, and custodian.

Montis is building the next generation of natively digital CSD infrastructure for global capital markets, that leverages blockchain technology to revolutionise the post-trade space and allow tokenised assets, such as digital securities or security tokens, to realise their full potential. Montis has recently submitted its CSD authorisation application in Luxembourg to provide the services required to record, trade, hold, transfer, and settle natively digital and non-native tokenised securities, alongside conventional securities, on innovative blockchain technology.

The Montis DLT post-trade market infrastructure is designed to be blockchain agnostic and will be available to exchanges and market participants globally.

www.montis.digital