On 9 October 2026, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) issued a Call for Evidence on central counterparty (CCP) collateral tokenisation.
Background
The Call for Evidence seeks to gather evidence on the legal, market, operational and infrastructure issues raised by tokenised collateral arrangements. It sets the scene on the potential implications of tokenisation in the life cycle of CCP collateral, provides a high-level picture of the main models that appear to exist for the tokenisation of assets (and cash), covers the legal considerations related to the different use models of tokenisation and looks at the market-risk and operational resilience aspects.
The objective of the Call for Evidence is not to assume that tokenisation requires a fundamentally new collateral regime, but rather to assess whether the existing regulatory regime is appropriate for the use of tokenised collateral in the clearing space, or whether tokenised collateral raises material issues in relation to existing EU requirements and supervisory expectations.
Next steps
The deadline for responding to the Call for Evidence is 15 January 2027.
ESMA will consider the feedback in Q1 2027.
Depending on the results of the assessment of the feedback, as well as related work ESMA is carrying out in relation to tokenisation in other areas of financial markets, ESMA will decide on the most appropriate course of action.