Interview Series – Anthony Woolley, Head of Business Development at Ownera

Anthony Woolley is the Head of Business Development at Ownera, he’s a banking executive with expertise in Capital Markets at Citi, Societe Generale and HSBC. Co-Chair of the GDF Private Markets Steering Group and the GDF FI Standards working Group.

Ownera is a leader in digital securities, they have a mission to enable a digital private market, by interconnecting the global financial industry.

We caught up with Anthony Wooley prior to his attending of Digital Assets Week Singapore conference this September.

Prior to Ownera you had worked 25 years in public capital markets, how did this experience help transition you to blockchain and digital assets?

Over the last three decades I lived through the digital transformation of capital markets – from the advent of electronic deal entry in the 90s through to recent developments in automated algorithmic trading.  However these changes were only ever optimising how trades were negotiated and not actually transforming the full life cycle of transactions through to clearing and settlement.  This has resulted in massive operational and technology complexity and a proliferation of market intermediaries all compensating for the risks of delayed settlement and the potential default of a counter-party.

In my previous role as UK CIO of a major bank I got interested around 2014 in the way in which blockchain could automate the whole lifecycle of a financial transaction in real-time and support the peer-to-peer transfer of value without intermediaries.  This led me to get engaged in multiple industry initiatives in the digital assets space working with literally hundreds of fintechs.  It also taught me the futility of trying to rewire the public capital markets from the inside. Ultimately I made the move to Ownera where I saw the potential to actually execute on the vision of a full digital transformation of our financial system.

Read the full interview on securitie.io website.