VIDEO | The 70s where not the merriest era for growing up in Britain, BNP Paribas’ Alan Cameron could tell you (and in Helsinki in Wednesday morning, he actually did). But that rock music! Forcing ourselves to do new things, or old things in new ways, can lead us to progress and identify new simplicities.

Kicking off the two-day PostTrade 360° Helsinki 2022 conference, Alan Cameron took a reflective look at the way we do things in the industry these days. He argues it is time to put asset servicing (his own firm’s core business, by the way) centre stage. And not least: getting a sense of direction when it comes to the settlements issues. In any case, let’s always remember that necessity is the mother of invention.

Looking at the processes for communication between issuers and investors, for example in connection with corporate actions, Alan Cameron finds the map more similar to the underground system of London than that of his childhood Glasgow.

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“When I first started looking into this a couple of years ago, I couldn’t believe how complicated we could make something that was already complex,” he says – acknowledging that this was never what the infrastructure was primarily designed for in the first place.

Alan Cameron is Head of Client Line Advisory, BNP Paribas Securities Services.


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