After the government and the parliament, last year, paved the way for private investors to enjoy the same tax benefits as corporates when investing in shares and equity funds, we are well underway to develop a concept for the Share Savings Account. Our aim is to deliver account functionality during the first quarter, and we hope this will be appreciated by our clients and all the private investors who henceforth will get a tax benefit by using this account.
Internationally, VPS is also going to contribute after joining the Liquidity Alliance founded by Clearstream/Deutsche Börse in 2013. We have decided to participate in the development of a brand new prototype blockchain solution for cross-border collateral transfer in cooperation with Deutsche Börse and three other CSDs. We see this as part of our future strategy that will allow VPS to offer sophisticated collateral management services for securities registered with VPS. Further details are available in a separate article in this newsletter and in the press release that was recently published.
In 2016 we decided to cancel the agreement to implement a new core system from Percival. Instead, we decided to take the full responsibility for the renewal and development of VPS 2.0 ourselves. In this connection we have developed VPS Road Map 1.0 in collaboration with our clients. We are on schedule with respect to the mutually agreed deliveries, and all deliveries were carried out according to plan for 2016. We are also making good progress with the delivery expected during the first quarter of 2017.
In 2016 VPS introduced gift savings as part of the fund module in VPS Client Services. With this new service, it is possible to give fund units as a gift, either as a one-off purchase or as a savings agreement. It was particularly joyful to see so many new subscriptions before Christmas, and we do, indeed, hope that the gift vouchers found their way to the Christmas tree.
It will be interesting to see what 2017 is going to bring us. We started the year by arranging the fourth Stock Exchange and Securities conference in cooperation with Oslo Børs. We are very pleased that approximately 160 guests attended from the issuers, the Financial Supervisory Authority, the Ministry of Finance, the political environment, brokers, fund companies, banks, infrastructure companies, professional and industrial bodies, both Norwegian and Nordic.
2016 was an eventful year for VPS and I am sure of one thing – VPS will also in 2017 develop new and efficient services for our clients.
Sincerely yours,
John-Arne Haugerud
CEO