7 November 2024 marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of Krajowy Depozyt Papierów Wartościowych (KDPW) as a stand-alone company whose mission is to ensure the security of trading on the capital market. For three decades now, the company has been providing integrated services to financial market participants and creating solutions to support the operation and development of the capital market.
KDPW has been providing services including recording of securities and clearing and settlement of transactions since the very beginning of the capital market in Poland in 1991. In the early years, KDPW operated as an integral part of the Warsaw Stock Exchange (GPW).
Thirty years ago, when KDPW began operating as a stand-alone institution, the Polish market was one of the first in the world to introduce extensive dematerialisation of securities. From the outset, KDPW relied on state-of-the-art technological solutions. The company has its own system for the recording of securities and for clearing and settlement.
Over the years, KDPW has evolved from a securities depository and settlement institution to a thriving group of companies offering a complementary range of services to the financial market. The highlights in our history include milestones which made a lasting impact on the profile of the KDPW Group and its offering.
These milestones include the implementation of the kdpw_stream depository and settlement system which supports the vast majority of the KDPW Group’s services.
Another milestone in the development of the Group was the spin-off from KDPW’s organisation of the company KDPW_CCP which provides the functions of a clearing house on the Polish market. No less important is the EU authorisation of KDPW_CCP. KDPW_CCP provides clearing services for and guarantees the clearing of OTC derivatives; it clears cash market and conditional (repo) transactions concluded on the Treasury BondSpot Poland platform.
Thanks to the KDPW Group’s offering, entities obliged to report details of trades can use the services of KDPW which has established and operates a trade repository registered with the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) under the EU regulations EMIR and SFTR. In response to market needs related to the entry into force of the EU regulation MiFIR, KDPW has launched the ARM (Approved Reporting Mechanism) service, which provides the supervisory authority with details of trades in financial instruments.
KDPW is the only entity in Poland authorised by the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) to provide the service of issuing legal entity identifiers (LEI). KDPW is responsible for issuing ISIN, FISN and CFI codes to financial instruments.
KDPW offers services which facilitate the communication of listed companies with their shareholders in line with the SRD II. One of KDPW’s new services is an application for providing shareholder identification details to public companies. In May 2021, the application was enhanced with new functionalities for the identification of shareholders of non-public companies. The applications support the development of shareholder loyalty programmes.
The KDPW Group operates a Data Portal available at
https://data.kdpw.pl.
These and many other solutions and services provided by the KDPW Group form a complementary package of settlement, clearing, corporate actions, data collection, and numbering agency functions. The KDPW Group is the largest and by far the most advanced post-trade service provider in this part of Europe. Its overarching objective is to provide an attractive end-to-end service to Polish investment firms and foreign entities operating on the Polish financial market.
