OTC bond platform Origin confirms $7 million Series A investment
Origin has closed its $7million Series A round led by Clearstream and the Luxembourg Stock Exchange after achieving regulatory approval, bringing total funding to date to $10million
Origin, the London-based fintech company that has pioneered the digitalisation of bond issuance, has successfully closed its $7million Series A funding round led by Clearstream and the Luxembourg Stock Exchange (LuxSE) following regulatory approval. This brings the company’s total funding to date to $10million.
Recently, FinanceFeeds reported that interest by major venues has once again arisen with regard to acquiring OTC derivatives platforms, detailing the rationale behind Origin’s investment.
As a pioneer of digital debt capital markets, Origin offers 3 products that work together to automate debt issuance: their Marketplace, Documentation and Post-Trade modules. The company now counts over 90 issuers and 20 dealers as clients, including some of the largest participants in the international capital markets.
The partners’ ambition is to further develop Origin’s existing platform to establish a digital, end-to-end, straight-through-processing issuance platform for international fixed-income capital markets, enabling instant, T+0 issuance, listing and settlement. This will be achieved in a phased approach over the coming years in cooperation with major market participants, including Origin’s existing dealer and issuer client base, as well as Clearstream’s and LuxSE’s partners in the agency, post-trade and infrastructure space.
The platform already provides an integrated digital listing service, enabling issuers and their agents to achieve listing at LuxSE with a single click. It will in addition start offering instant ISIN generation for transactions crystallised on Origin Documentation by utilising ISINs allocated by Clearstream. The parties aim to go live with this feature by mid-2021. This will be followed by integrating standardised and automated ICSD admission checks into the platform, leading to the automation of the origination to settlement and payment processes.
Importantly, the platform is being developed in an open-access and open-architecture manner, allowing participation from market participants across the various layers of the international fixed income ecosystem. While the initial focus will be in the Eurobond bond market covered by the ICSDs, the parties aim to expand the offering to also cover other asset classes and market segments in the future.
Jens Hachmeister, Head of Issuer Services & New Digital Markets at Clearstream, said: “We are happy to see this partnership evolving. Combining Origin’s solution with well-established issuance infrastructures responds to current market demands. It gives clients the opportunity for increased agility of the issuance process, resulting in faster and more straight-through issuance in a secure environment.”
Raja Palaniappan, CEO and co-founder of Origin said, “What excites me about this partnership, is not just the scale of the ambition that we have for this project, but, more importantly, how much thought and commitment there is amongst our three organisations towards making this vision a reality. Instant digital debt issuance is no longer just a dream – we have clear roadmap for making this happen over the next few years.”
“Through this pioneering partnership, we provide companies with faster, cheaper and safer access to capital markets. We are truly excited to drive the digitalisation and standardisation of fixed-income issuance together with our partners, and at the same time support the goals defined in the Capital Markets Union new action plan by making financing more accessible to European companies,” commented Arnaud Delestienne, Director of International Capital Markets at the Luxembourg Stock Exchange.
