Tammy Phillips, formerly CEO of SBLNetworks, has created Asterisk Networks, a new peer to peer (P2P) securities finance fintech venture.
Phillips, who said she established the company because she could see a “growing frustration in the securities lending marketplace”, will be the managing director.
The new platform delivers a standardised framework for P2P securities lending providing electronic negotiation, market standard documentation, incorporating Euroclear’s infrastructure for settlement, tri-party collateral management and reporting.
The Asterisk platform also enables participants to manage the full life-cycle of events associated with stock loans such as rate changes, returns, recall, corporate actions, together with access to a real-time anonymised transaction ticker providing data such as security identifiers and quantity and fee on every transaction executed across the platform.
Any eligible counterparty can participate in the platform. Participants can sign documentation for platform connectivity that binds them to standardised protocols around execution, market standard documentation, and collateral management.
Once a participant has onboarded with Asterisk Networks, they then approve other participants as active counterparties for bilateral transactions.
According to Phillips, initial marketing will focus on beneficial owners and asset managers such as insurance companies, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, mutual funds, UCIT funds and hedge funds.
In an exclusive interview with Securities Lending Times, Phillips said the securities lending market is “overcomplicated, opaque, and has been largely unchanged for many years”.
“The current bank dominated model has been overwhelmed by regulatory costs and reporting which in turn has impacted revenue for both the buy-side and intermediaries. Our platform provides a solution and enables the removal of many of these impediments.”
She added: “We are at the chrysalis stage and, so far, we have had overwhelming support. This has come from likely participants, a range of stakeholders, new investors, service providers that form part of the infrastructure of the platform.”
“I would like to say thank you to everyone for their support, you know who you are. Their understanding and counsel in recent months and during my brief interlude has been really appreciated.”
Prior to setting up Asterisk Networks, Phillips worked as CEO of SBLNetworks from January 2017 to October 2018.
SBL Networks, a fintech firm was founded in 2016 by Peter Fenichel. It is understood the firm entered into a voluntary liquidation process in late October.
Commenting on SBL Networks voluntary liquidation, Phillips said: “With diminishing financial resources and no ability to raise additional capital for a singular fully supported business strategy, [the SBL Networks] board and shareholders had no option but to place the company into a creditors’ voluntary liquidation.”
Prior to SBL Network, Tammy held senior roles in securities finance as a managing director at Morgan Stanley and Barclays Capital and Division Director at Macquarie Bank.
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