The World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), the global industry group for exchanges and CCPs, today announces the 2025 priorities for the exchange and clearing industry.
The WFE Board – 18 leaders of market infrastructures from around the world, met last week to discuss and agree the priorities. The WFE, which represents over 250 market infrastructures, will focus on the areas below:
- The Role, Purpose & Work of Market Infrastructure in the next decade: As public, lit markets continue to champion the rights of investors, issuers and market participants, while more lightly regulated alternatives continue to be a source of concern and undermine social welfare, the WFE will advocate for regulation for all forms of financial trading that ensures markets remain trustworthy, inclusive, transparent, and serves the needs of the industry’s diverse stakeholders.
- ESG Leadership for Market Infrastructures: Regulated marketplaces remain the bastion of ESG, and the WFE will work on practical guides on disclosures and transition, in support of securities issuers and derivatives markets.
- Innovation in Technology: As IT evolves continuously and plays a central role in modern market infrastructure, the WFE will assess the changes and how best to manage the use of technology, such as Artificial Intelligence. This will include the key issues of security and resilience – which are the hallmarks of Market Infrastructure. We will be working with regulators to ensure that emerging standards in these areas neither deter innovation nor fail to protect investors.
- Private and Public Markets - improving the health of capital markets: Private markets now occupy a grey area relative to public ones, especially with growth in secondary trading and retail access. With our stakeholders, the WFE will examine how private and public markets interact and how to optimise this interaction, to ensure that the incentives to list and to trade transparently are aligned with the known benefits of lit, public markets.
- Clearing, CCPs and the changes arising from new regulation: The WFE, which is the largest global organisation representing CCPs, will work on the issues arising from the wave of new policy making, especially around margin practices, to ensure the CCP voice, and consensus, is heard clearly.
- Education: With the WFE’s Market Infrastructure Certificate entering its third year, the WFE will work to ensure the learning and educational needs of future leaders are being served.
As the voice of the exchange industry, the WFE will continue to foster and promote efficient market structures that are resilient, robust, fair, transparent and stable during this time of change and innovation.
Nandini Sukumar, CEO at the WFE, said: “We will continue to champion the sustainable growth of public markets and collaborate with stakeholders to ensure their ongoing health and robustness, given their important economic and social role to the global economy.”
