The central securities depositories (CSD) of Russia and China have signed a memorandum of understanding to facilitate cooperation in fintech sphere, particularly using blockchain technology in the post-trade sector.

According to the official announcement, National Settlement Depository (NSD), Russian CSD, signed a memorandum of understanding with China Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation Limited (CSDC), China’s CSD providing services to the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

“The Asian region is a very important element for full-scale integration of Russia’s post-trade infrastructure into the global financial system. Together with Chinese colleagues and under the support of the Bank of Russia and the People’s Bank of China we work on providing investors with mutual access to our countries’ markets”, Eddie Astanin, Chairman of the Executive Board, NSD said.

The institutions have agreed to exchange experience and information, and to develop cooperation in the sphere of depository and settlement operations, operational interactions via correspondent accounts (links), corporate action processing, and information services.

“Cooperation in the FinTech sphere will become an important element in our cooperation with CSDC. In particular, we agreed to coordinate our efforts aimed at researching the opportunities for using the blockchain technology in the post-trade sector”, Astanin added.

Earlier in April, NSD announced that it has successfully finished developing and testing an e-proxy voting system running on distributed ledger technology.