Beginning 28 June, the National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC) plans to operate 24/5, providing its CCP guarantee to overnight transactions in the US equity market. The near-horizon market shift matters for a very specific reason: it falls to someone in another time zone to stay on. It’s a point Christian Sjoberg, president of Nordic CCP Nasdaq Clearing, stresses.
We meet at WFEClear Toronto—shortly after he arrives from Stockholm—and he draws an immediate parallel to traversing time zones. “It’s the nature of being in different time zones; there’s always someone who may have to stay awake,” he says, reflecting on how change ripples outward, and how 24/5 clearing is likely to drive demand for follow-the-sun operations, full outsourcing to providers capable of round-the-clock service, or the use of custodians to match on clients’ behalf. Adding staff in new time zones could become necessary as a larger share of operations needs to remain open on a 24/5 basis.
Beyond the competitive case for extended hours trading, it’s always the same story underneath: how people adapt—whether they’re investors or the operations professionals building and maintaining the plumbing.
It’s with that in mind that I sit down with Christian to talk about how Nasdaq Clearing is preparing for what’s coming, and how a combination of technology and people will make a difference in a 24/5 and digital world.
We start with the promise of technology in post-trade settlement to facilitate the shift to 24/5, and ultimately 24/7, trading. On the trading side, there’ll be little difference with daytime trading today.
The difference arises when securities are sent to the DTCC for settlement. “The United States has a highly efficient post-trade market because it operates under a unified clearing and settlement infrastructure. Europe is much more complex,” he says. It’s a market where DLT and tokenisation may provide solutions to reduce the fragmentation by establishing new post-trade structures in Europe.
Post-trade processes in a digital world
With DLT, the customer can choose whether to settle in DVP form or DLT form. In the US, the DTCC will provide both the ledger on the DLT as well as the traditional ledger and will be responsible for managing any fungibility between these securities. The tokenised portions remain in the same booking records as the real securities, but are allocated separately and exist on a distinct register.
By automating the entire asset management lifecycle, tokenisation presents opportunities to address a range of persistent challenges, such as tax withholding, proxy voting, corporate actions, and collateral mobility.
The harder problem is interoperability. Different token standards, a proliferation of DLT ledgers both public and private, and a market that’s reluctant to over-invest in competing alternatives all create friction. Sjoberg’s view is pragmatic: the ecosystem needs to converge on fewer standards, not more. He anticipates that use cases will develop for both public and private blockchains, but prefers that the market stabilizes with a limited selection of each type rather than continuing to fragment.
Banks are already moving. He observes two trends here: first banks are seeking to ringfence the complexity of new wallet infrastructure and tokenised assets from their clients, doing the integration work so that holdings look and behave like traditional securities from an institutional customer perspective; and second, they are looking to build a new type of “super-app” for investors already comfortable with crypto and wallets, who want a seamless experience when combining traditional and digital assets.
Managing risk and margin cycles amid change
Turning to the operational detail of how a clearing house prepares – and this is where expertise and strategic insight matter—Sjoberg believes CCPs should have to provide their services during the same hours as the exchanges they clear for. If an exchange is open 23/5 – the industry-driven structure that pauses for one hour to process corporate actions and settle trades—the CCP must match those hours, and there are several ways to achieve that.
Under the DTCC, all equity instruments traded on an official US exchange during opening hours are automatically guaranteed and cleared, then novated and netted later in the day, with risk monitoring happening throughout. Other central counterparties (CCPs) that utilise real-time risk management are expected to support extended trading in a comparable manner. It is anticipated that these organisations will achieve this with a significantly higher level of automation in their risk management processes, particularly for those focusing on real-time risk monitoring.
Real-time risk management technology already exists. But supporting extended opening hours requires a shift away from legacy, batch-based systems toward continuous, highly automated risk management.
As clearing hours extend and central banks rethink their settlement infrastructure, Sjoberg envisages a model with more frequent variation margin calls settling intraday—managing risk faster and in a more automated way in a 24/5 world.
CME’s clearing coin offers one example of this in practice: by converting securities into a stable coin or clearing coin, they effectively become cash – something that can be booked rapidly without generating millions of individual settlement instructions. The result is real-time risk management that keeps intraday exposure tightly contained, a capability that becomes far more valuable as markets move toward 24/7 operation.
Modernising without creating fragility
For CCPs, this is one of the most challenging goals. Resilience requires transformation that doesn’t negatively impact the market or introduce fragility – and the move towards the cloud, 24/5 trading, and new technologies brings its own category of risks, particularly around capability gaps.
Sjoberg describes Nasdaq Clearing’s approach as building in parallel. Production data feeds both old and new systems simultaneously, validating every component before anything goes live. The benefit is threefold: regulators can see real numbers, customers can follow the evolution, and staff can be trained into new technologies gradually rather than thrown into them.
That last point matters more than it might seem. Many people in post-trade have spent entire careers in a single clearinghouse or CSD. They understand the existing system intimately – and that can make them resistant to new architectures, not out of stubbornness but because they want the new system to behave exactly like the old one. Running in parallel for an extended period gives those teams time to develop comfort and fluency.
These modernisation projects are also unusually broad in their reach, touching every participant in the market – all of whom may need to update their models, reconnect systems, and change how they work with APIs. That scale demands constant customer dialogue and validation. Sjoberg is also clear about the need for external partners. Managing new technology requires both capacity and specific expertise, and while being part of a large technology provider like Nasdaq is a clear advantage, CCPs must be deliberate about what stays close to the business and what can be outsourced to achieve scale and efficiency.
