EquiLend
Nick Delikaris
19 June 2025
EquiLend鈥檚 Nick Delikaris, chief product officer, explores the firm鈥檚 journey to innovation through its multi-year initiative to achieve 1Source, and why building with the market beats building for it
Image: Nick Delikaris
As we enter the second half of the year, how does EquiLend view its footprint in Europe?
Europe remains a priority growth market for EquiLend. We continue to see strong demand for greater standardisation and automation 鈥� particularly in post-trade functions. Our upcoming rollout of 1Source represents a major step in this journey, and we are working closely with clients and industry partners across the region to ensure we deliver real operational value.
Innovation has become a key word for market participants in the past year. How do you view innovation? And in what ways are you demonstrating a journey to innovation at EquiLend?
For us, innovation means solving real problems. It is not about buzzwords 鈥� it is about impact. At EquiLend, we focus on identifying points of friction in the market and designing technology that removes them. The securities finance market is incredibly complex and highly interconnected, yet much of it still depends on fragmented systems, manual reconciliation, and legacy workflows.
The 1Source journey is a perfect example. It is a multi-year initiative, co-developed with clients, to eliminate trade reconciliation errors through a shared ledger that memorialises lifecycle events, on trade date and for as long as the contract remains open. It is innovation by collaboration, leveraging distributed ledger technology (DLT) and smart contracts to build solutions that scale.
1Source has been a significant project for the firm. Can you explore how the platform aims to support the securities finance market from an automation and digitalisation standpoint?
1Source creates a single source of truth for contract details and lifecycle events between counterparties. Rather than relying on separate records and downstream comparison tools, firms can align on key economics at the point of trade. This unlocks straight-through processing, streamlines settlement, billing and returns, and reduces costly exceptions. With contract details aligned, 1Source will allow for smooth settlement 鈥� an advantage in a T+1 environment.
We are effectively shifting a manual, fragmented process into a real-time, digital framework. It is not just about digitising existing processes 鈥� it is about reimagining them for a world where data is synchronised, not copied, and automation is built into the platform itself.
Can you elaborate on the journey to 1Source so far, and what key lessons you have learned
The biggest lesson has been that building with the market beats building for it. From the outset, we have engaged launch partners 鈥� including BNY, Goldman Sachs, and National Bank of Canada 鈥� to co-develop workflows, test integrations and shape the roadmap. That approach has been critical to ensuring scalability, adoption, and relevance across geographies and business models.
What does it mean to provide a 鈥榮ingle source of truth鈥�? How important is this in further developing the securities finance market?
It is about trust in data. When both sides of a transaction operate from the same version of the contract, they eliminate the need for constant reconciliation 鈥� and avoid the errors, disputes and delays that come with it.
As the industry moves toward real-time settlement, regulatory transparency and cross-venue integration, that foundational trust becomes essential. A single source of truth unlocks greater transparency, auditability, and efficiency, which in turn enables innovation in areas like collateral optimisation, real-time risk management and tokenised asset workflows.
Looking forward, how is EquiLend shaping its development strategy over H2 2025 and beyond? When can the market expect to see an official launch of 1Source?
We are on track to launch 1Source in the coming months, with launch partners already testing live loans on the platform. From there, we will expand functionality to support additional asset classes and collateral types, while expanding the network to new regions and market participants. The goal is long-term transformation 鈥� one that future-proofs clients against regulatory shifts, operational risks and evolving market structures.
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