MERJ Exchange Full Membership of ANNA
Seychelles, 3rd December 2019.
MERJ has been a partner member of ANNA since 2013. In November 2019 MERJ was successfully voted a Full Member by the Association. So what is ANNA and what does it mean to be a Full Member?
What is ANNA?
The Association of National Numbering Agencies (ANNA) is a global association of national numbering agencies with a common mission. That is to provide reliable, accurate and trusted means to identify and describe securities that can be used by all nations and their markets. The Association was established in 1992 by 22 founding numbering agencies and is the membership organisation of national numbering agencies, which are operated by depositories, exchanges, government agencies, national data vendors and other financial infrastructure organisations.
ANNA seeks to foster standardisation within the financial industry by upholding the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) principles and by promoting International Securities Identification Numbers (ISINs), Classification of Financial Instrument codes (CFIs), and Financial Instrument Short Names (FISN), for financial instruments.
Every country that takes on the responsibility of issuing globally standard identifiers accomplishes much more than only associating codes with aspects of an investment instrument. This step enables investment capital to flow easily across borders. It facilitates modern automated exchanges and trade settlement. Moreover, each nation that participates in the common financial language adds to and profits from global understanding of opportunity and risk in the markets.
In taking responsibility for assigning these identifiers, the members of ANNA meet strict and detailed standards in how they register the securities and keep the data current, in their business practices in serving issuers and users of the identifier, and in the group requirement to keep standards and practices current with changing market conditions. In all of this, the Association of National Numbering Agencies provides formal framework for support, education, technical and operational solutions developing, and representation to financial and regulatory forums. ANNA also operates the ANNA Service Bureau to consolidate the identifiers from around the world and provide a single point of access for users who may need regular feeds of new and updated identifier information.
ANNA is responsible for monitoring the national numbering agencies for compliance with standards in business operations, technology and data quality, as well as providing assistance to agencies in difficulty.
ANNA Membership
The membership of ANNA are National Numbering Agencies (NNAs). They have a crucial role in the financial markets of their own nations, as well as global markets. Their activity is to accept registration information directly from issuers of new financial instruments such as shares, bonds and derivatives, and then to issue codes that uniquely identify these instruments.
After each new instrument is registered and issued an International Securities Identification Number (ISIN) and a Classification of Financial Instruments (CFI), the NNAs maintain the validity of the registration data. The NNAs are the primary sources of the codes and identification information in their local markets. As a group, they provide daily updates to the ANNA Service bureau, which maintains the consolidated global database.
ANNA has two levels of membership for National Numbering Agencies. Full members are NNAs that have been operational for two years as partner members of ANNA and are voted in by the ANNA membership. ANNA partners are NNAs that are operational NNAs waiting for partnership eligibility and NNAs that are working to become fully operational.
MERJ and ANNA
The journey of MERJ EXCHANGE to be a part of ANNA started in 2013 when it was appointed by the Seychelles Financial Services Authority (FSA)-its National Financial Regulator to take on this role for the benefit of the national economy and to support the free flow of financial information and capital throughout global markets.
In the Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) hosted by the Central Bank of Uruguay in late November 2019, MERJ EXCHANGE was successfully voted as a Full Member by the Association. As a Full Member, MERJ now has the following rights:
Right to vote and to speak at ordinary or extraordinary General Meetings
Right to vote on ANNA and ASB Board Elections and being eligible for position on the Boards
Voting on the annual accounts
Right to inspect the annual accounts
Participate in working groups / task forces
Power of investigation and supervision of independent auditors
Request an extraordinary General meeting (by at least one fifth of the membership)
MERJ operates under strict rules of the ISO agreements for the identifiers it issues. These include adhering to the format and content of the ISIN code and limiting their prices to simple cost recovery, despite the NNAs’ significant investments in operations and technology to meet the required standards of data integrity and industry service.
Individually and as a group, the ANNA membership is not just charged with assigning identifiers, but also adapting their processes and systems on a regular basis to meet changing market needs. They also contribute their knowledge of local markets to the ISO working groups that update the identifier standards, as well as the ANNA working groups that support members in solving problems and achieving common goals.
ANNA and Digital Assets
In October 2019 ANNA announced the formation of a Technology Taskforce to explore extending its principles and standards to digital assets. The Taskforce has been created to assess the role and scope of ISINs in respect to digital asset identification and to provide recommendations on the potential benefits of creating guidelines across all kinds of digital assets, such as asset tokens, payment tokens, utility tokens and hybrid tokens.
MERJ’s membership of ANNA is another important milestone in the journey to become a leading global securities ecosystem, and may well prove vital in the mission to become a bridge between traditional markets and the emerging world of digital assets.
MERJ Exchange is a multi-market global financial exchange, clearing house and securities depository. Our group is regulated to the highest global standards and operates the entire exchange and post-trade infrastructure from end to end. We are pioneering a shift in the global capital markets by combining the best of blockchain technology with regulated infrastructure.
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