KfW Closes the First Digital Issuance via Clearstream's D7

KfW is the first issuer to have launched a digital fixed-income bond in the form of central register security based on the German Electronic Securities Act (eWpG). Together with Clearstream, the post-trade service provider of Deutsche Börse Group, KfW has thus taken a forward-looking step towards the digitalisation of securities issuance in the largest capital market segment – fixed income.

The issue was carried out by Clearstream on Deutsche Börse's D7 digital post-trade platform. The digital issuance of financial products via the D7 platform shortens the extensive and multi-day issuance process to just a few minutes. This saves time, manual effort and therefore processing costs.

"Digitalisation is a central component of our KfWplus strategy adopted in April. It is therefore remarkable that KfW's treasury and transaction management have implemented this pioneering electronic transaction via the D7 platform. As one of the world's largest capital market issuers, innovation in the area of our refinancing is important to us in order to improve efficiency and reduce operating risks and transaction costs," said Melanie Kehr, Member of the Executive Board of KfW Group.

Jens Hachmeister, Head of Issuer Services & New Digital Markets at Clearstream, says: "With the digital post-trading platform D7, we are building a new infrastructure for future-ready markets worldwide. Like this, we offer our clients a significantly quicker and scalable solution for securities issuance. Following the successful launch of our structured products offering, we are now enhancing D7 to include the digital issuance of debt securities, such as commercial papers and straight bonds. We are thrilled that KfW is joining us on this journey. The outstanding market demand shows: the time to digitise financial markets is now."