Asia’s emerging markets are like blank slates ready to be painted with the future. In a recent interview with The Asset, Jon Hodges, head of trading and asset services, Asia Pacific at fintech firm FIS explained why being less established could be an advantage in an era of financial transformation.
“A stark contrast” is how The Asset describes the difference between Asia’s mature and emerging markets. “Mature financial centres like Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore are facing the challenge of modernising deeply entrenched infrastructure,” the article claims. Meanwhile, “emerging markets like Vietnam and Indonesia have the advantage of starting afresh”.
The article quotes Hodges: “It’s that greenfield opportunity that allows some of these markets to skip entire generations of technology and go straight to real-time, cloud-native infrastructure.”
Aspiring trailblazers
Although external reforms, such as T+1 settlement, definitely have a part to play in driving investments in post-trade automation and straight-through processing (STP) in Asia, the region is not merely following trends. Unburdened by legacy, its emerging markets are actually leading the way with “an openness to new asset classes that’s far ahead of their global peers”.
Hodges shared his experience: “We’re being asked about supporting fractional ownership, tokenised assets, and digital instruments, not just in pilot mode, but in production. There’s a genuine appetite to do things differently.”
Connections matter
With the interest in new asset classes comes the “convergence of public, private, and digital assets”. Hodges shared with The Asset his observation that “demand is rising for platforms that can support hybrid funds, private credit, and tokenised instruuments all within the same operational framework”.
He does not believe, however, that the answer lies in a single platform built for all asset classes. Instead, he prefers “a connected model: powerful specialist tools linked by common data architecture and workflow orchestration”. There is also a need to enahnce administration and reporting. Only then can firms manage liquidity, risk, and performance across asset types “without sacrificing depth in any one category”.
