Broadridge Financial Solutions, a global Fintech leader, announced the launch of a new whitepaper in collaboration with Firebrand Research, highlighting the latest trends in capital markets across the Nordic region. The research, ‘Capital Markets Trends in the Nordics: Harmonising While Retaining Local Expertise,’ reveals an increasing focus on improving efficiency, transitioning away from legacy infrastructure, and modernizing systems to support future market requirements.

“This report delivers critical insight into how Nordic firms are planning to stay competitive in the face of market structure standardization and modernization. It also highlights an increased focus on shareholder support and corporate governance engagement in response to the revised Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD II), as well as a growing regional focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics,” said Mike Sleightholme, President of Broadridge International. “Additionally, the report showcases how attitudes towards next generation technologies differ. For example, we are seeing that Nordic financial institutions are being slower to experiment with distributed ledger technologies than their continental European counterparts, but there is a growing interest in the potential of AI and how it can be leveraged to drive new efficiencies.”

“There are a lot of interesting and important lessons to be learned from the Nordic markets’ recent experiences with market infrastructure change and their ongoing focus on establishing ESG standards, especially those related to shareholder engagement,” said Virginie O’Shea, Founder of Firebrand Research. “The region is focused on retaining attractive local differentiators from a tax or capital raising perspective but also introducing greater standardization and harmonization with the EU to industrialize where it makes sense.”

The whitepaper found that Nordic firms working across capital markets are:

• Coping with market infrastructure changes and are keen to ensure that they keep pace with these changes and retain their competitive edge
• Focusing on stakeholder engagement, and are particularly emphasizing environmental and governance topics, furthering the region’s differentiation strength in these areas
• Looking to attract foreign investors through greater standardization and harmonization with the EU, mobilising trapped liquidity and attracting greater international investment
• Focusing on improving efficiency across their operation to reduce costs and risks
• Evaluating next-generation technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) to generate new revenue streams

To download the full report, click here.

Source: Broadridge