Rebuilding the Infrastructure, Not Iterating: Euroclear on Digital Assets

Quick Summary

How does an infrastructure balance genuine innovation with the resilience clients rely on? Isabelle Delorme, Global Head of Product Strategy & Innovation at Euroclear, admits it is a challenge. Digital assets are not incremental innovation: the industry has to rebuild an infrastructure. Euroclear is building a dedicated organisation to run that transition across everything it does, with the aim of delivering at scale in the short term, not in 10 years.

Why is digital assets not incremental innovation?

Delorme is candid: this is definitely a challenge. Euroclear has always been innovative, but it is changing its ways of working because this time is different. It is important to acknowledge, she says, that we have to rebuild an infrastructure, all of us, an ecosystem able to operate digital assets in an efficient and satisfactory manner.

That is why she stresses it is not an incremental innovation. It is about giving Euroclear the means to rebuild an infrastructure, a new digital environment.

How is Euroclear organising for the transition?

Euroclear is managing the digital asset transition, product management and digital strategy in a very transversal manner across everything it does today. In practice, it is building an organisation with dedicated people working on the transition to digital technologies.

That team is designed to interact with, and co-create this digital environment with, the rest of the organisation. Euroclear wants the new team to have the means and a form of autonomy to get the agility it needs, which Delorme calls both a challenge and a prerequisite.

What else is needed to deliver at scale?

It is not a given, Delorme says, that because the technology exists the industry will get there. Euroclear has to think about the right organisation, and also the right ways of working with clients, including:

• Client interaction platforms
• Experimentation platforms
• Partnership windows

Because the direction on digital asset principles is now clear, she says it is important to equip Euroclear with resources, an approach and a framework with clients and partners, so that it delivers at scale, not in 10 years, but in the short term.

FF NEWS TAKE:

Most incumbents describe digital assets as an extension of what they already do. Delorme says the opposite: this is a rebuild, and pretending otherwise is how transitions stall. The organisational detail is the telling part, a dedicated team with real autonomy, working transversally rather than in an innovation silo. For an infrastructure whose first duty is resilience, admitting the scale of the job openly, and setting a short-term delivery horizon, is the credible way to do it.