Financial Market Infrastructure: where Trust meets Innovation

By Koen Vanderhoydonk

Having spent decades at the intersection of capital markets and technology, Daniel Maier decided to build his own firm in 2013. As CEO of Düsseldorf-based Chartered Investment, he has watched financial market infrastructure evolve into the digital age. Koen Vanderhoydonk sat down with Daniel and asked him about what modernisation really means, who will shape the transition, and why the most important work is also the least glamorous. “Capital markets are ultimately going to become completely digital.”

Daniel, you founded Chartered Investment with a particular belief. What was that belief, and does it still hold?

Daniel: “I founded Chartered Investment in 2013 with a particular belief: innovation in infrastructure and investment products would propel the next big leap in capital markets. They require a high-quality infrastructure, cutting-edge and functional, that should enable meaningful product innovation. In other words, technology is the foundation that enables and makes new financial products viable. Chartered Investment combines sophisticated financial engineering expertise with a robust technological framework to turn innovative concepts into investible solutions.”

“This belief has driven all of our innovation efforts since the start. Seeing where we are today, with all of the exchanges, CSDs, clearing houses and custodians simultaneously undergoing this major technological evolution, I'm experiencing a certain sense of satisfaction, but also some concern as to how long and how complex this evolution of financial market infrastructure (FMI) will probably be. In short, progress will be achieved through foundational change, but the road will be lengthy and challenging.”

Talking about complexity, where does this complexity come from?

Daniel: “The reality is that FMIs – exchanges, central securities depositories, clearinghouses, custodian banks – were not built with tokenised assets in mind. Indeed, they were designed for a different era, and they have been remarkably successful at what they were built to do: providing stability, legal certainty, and systemic robustness in markets that process trillions of euros in transactions every day. But it is not coincidental that they have been this successful. It is fundamental of what trust in capital markets actually means.”

“Today, these institutions are being asked to meet the needs of digital issuance, tokenised assets, real-time settlements, new cross-border operational needs, and increasing levels of scrutiny around digital assets and operational resilience. And the reality is, the question is not whether or not there is a need to change, the question is: how do we change these institutions without undermining the stability that has made them systemically important in the first place.”

So what does modernisation actually look like in practice?

Daniel: “When I talk about modernisation in this context, I mean the shift from traditional to digital issuance. In this process, legal recognition and regulatory expertise are at the heart of what we do. Rather than treating compliance as a constraint, we position it as a competitive advantage – a capability that enables clients to act with confidence in complex, multi-jurisdictional environments. Our approach centres on building compliant infrastructure from the ground up. And, of course, alongside this, there is the increasing requirement to support tokenised versions of real-world assets, which demands fully compliant environments, not sandboxes, but fully live systems operating under a recognised legal framework. This is being driven by both technology and regulatory frameworks.”

“For the issuance of digital assets throughout the EU, MiCAR is setting the compliance baseline. Legally recognised electronic securities registers are not only feasible but also operationally viable, as the German eWpG has already shown. Additionally, DORA, the Digital Operational Resilience Act, is making all financial institutions – including established FMIs – perform better in terms of operational resilience. When combined, these frameworks serve as the foundation for credible modernisation rather than acting as barriers to it.” 

Currently, there is a lot of discussion about DLT and AI in this space. What is your actual assessment of their contribution?

Daniel: “DLT's contribution here is not primarily about eliminating intermediaries; a narrative I've always found somewhat simplistic. Its value lies in improving auditability, supporting cross-border alignment of standards, and building operational resilience into infrastructure that currently relies on fragile reconciliation chains.”

“AI similarly adds value not by replacing human judgement in critical decisions, but by reducing error rates in lifecycle management: corporate actions, reporting, reconciliation. These are the actual bottlenecks in the functioning of the capital markets in the modern world, and they are, of course, very unsexy, and that is probably the main reason they are the most underinvested and underestimated part of the entire process.”

“FMIs must also support tokenised assets as well as traditional assets, in parallel, not as an interim solution, but as an ongoing business process. For an extended period of time, we must live in a world where both worlds exist, and the infrastructures that can support both worlds credibly, without compromising one or the other, will dictate the pace of the evolution.”

“One of the main components of this challenge is the alignment of standards across borders. These days, a tokenised instrument issued under one technical and legal framework might not be accepted, settled, or used under another. The efficiency gains of digital infrastructure will continue to be dispersed across jurisdictions until there is more convergence at the technical, legal, and operational levels. Here, harmonisation is a requirement for scale rather than an academic endeavour.”

New players are entering this space: technology firms seeking regulatory licenses, ‘DLT-first’ operations. How do you assess them?

Daniel: “Indeed, new types of players have entered the arena: technology firms that are digital natives, some of whom now seek regulatory licenses, with ‘DLT-first’ designs, API-native operating models, fully digital registries, and programmable workflows. What they have that incumbent FMIs find hard to replicate is the speed of innovation and the fresh approach.”

“But they're also missing something equally important: the 20+ years of capital markets operating history and how all of this actually works in practice, how risk models are actually built, how the relationship with regulators actually works under pressure, and what building institutional trust actually means. A digital securities register is not just a technical development, it is a regulatory, legal, and operational development, and the distance between capability and systemic trust is quite large, and this distance is only really perceptible to those who've spent time on either side of it.”

Where does Chartered Investment position itself in all of this?

Daniel: “I built Chartered Investment with a particular goal in mind: it had to be a company with traditional capital markets experience, digital platform architecture, and a history of regulated execution. Not two of those, but all three. The reason for this is quite simple: there is a form of innovation in our industry that is both technically brilliant and operationally useless, and there is a form of conservatism that is both operationally solid and quietly ineffective, and neither of those is sufficient for where the markets are going.”

“What we've created at Chartered Investment, with digital issuance pipelines that interface with existing legal systems and identifiers, a digital securities register with legal standing, automation tools that address the full lifecycle rather than front-end-only execution, and benchmark and data tools for digital securities, is a reflection of a decision to ensure technological advancement is compatible with institutional reality. That is who we are in the ecosystem. That is not a marketing statement. That is a statement of operational fact.”

“Since the benchmark and data dimension is often disregarded, I want to be precise about it. Without reliable, independently verifiable benchmarks and pricing strategies, digital securities cannot grow institutionally. One of the real barriers to the broader adoption of tokenised instruments has been the lack of transparent reference data. It is a fundamental contribution to the ecosystem, not a secondary capability, to provide that infrastructure – benchmarks that investors, issuers, and regulators can all rely on.”

How long will all of this take? And who will ultimately shape the outcome?

Daniel: “Capital markets are ultimately going to become completely digital. I believe that, and I've believed it for more than a decade. The transition of capital markets infrastructures, though, is a long and multi-layered process. The transition to electronic markets and trade took decades, and the evolution to international settlement systems is still 'work in progress'. The transition to digital asset infrastructures will be similar, with transformation, though slower and with more friction than some of the original proponents of digitalisation might have hoped. The outcome will not be driven by hype but by institutions that can combine trust, regulatory certainty and technological adaptability.”

“The institutions that will shape the future are not going to be the ones with the most aspirational vision statements. They're going to be the ones that can operate legacy systems in parallel with digital systems, that understand what legal certainty means in terms of scaling tokenised assets, that have built out cross-border operating capability rather than ambition, and that have built a level of trust that is not derived from a pitch deck but from years of operating without failure in a regulated world.”

“The backbone of the global financial system is currently under serious pressure, and the coming years will reveal both its breaking points as well as the strength of institutions that can withstand them.”

Daniel Maier is CEO of Chartered Investment, website: www.chartered-investment.com