Imperium establishes new advisory board

Imperium Markets, a digital markets platform builder and Tier 2 markets licensee, has formed an independent advisory board to help manage engagements with key stakeholders, including banks and regulators.

The new board will also oversee the delivery of its platform’s core capabilities – notably, issuance, trading, custody and settlement – in market, Imperium said.

Members of the new board include Imperium chair Rod Lewis, former Westpac Group treasurer Curt Zuber, and former MBIA UK chair and chief executive Chris Weeks.

Founded in 2016, Imperium is notable as the first fintech to be granted a Tier 2 markets licence by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC). The firm has secured partnerships with the big four banks alongside other FSIs, with a goal of boosting transparency for investors in the term deposit market.

The firm is notable for its recent experiments with blockchain technology for trading and the near-instant (aka ‘atomic’) settlement of tokenised assets.

For Lewis, the establishment of the new board “coincides with an acceleration of the acceptance of digital technology in financial markets both here and internationally”.

The Imperium chair welcomed the appointments of industry veterans Zuber and Weeks. The pair, he said, would bring “diverse and complementary experience that will ensure our focus on the financial markets digital transition proceeds in a manner that delivers efficiency gains for all market participants”.

Zuber, a Westpac alum, boasts more than 35 years of experience in banking, finance, treasury, risk management, and with executive leadership spanning Australia and the USA.

He served the majority of his career at Westpac, including as chief executive of Westpac Institutional Bank. Zuber also previously served 16 years as group treasurer within a 25-year tenure at Westpac’s Group Treasury department. As group treasurer, he chaired the bank’s Asset and Liability Committee.

Zuber currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Australian Office of Financial Management, which issues debt securities on behalf of the Australian Government.

Weeks also counts more than 35 years’ experience in the financial services industry, notably in the credit markets space, with roles overseeing origination, credit selection, analysis and credit portfolio management. Notably, he served as chair and chief executive of MBIA UK Insurance between 2004 to 2014, responsible for a debt portfolio of around $40 billion.

Prior to this, he ran MBIA’s European Structured Finance business and was formerly head of the Société Générale European Securitisation team based in Paris.

Lewis himself notched up more than 17 years with Commonwealth Bank, including a six-year stint as head of fixed-income trading and another six years as head of global markets trading.

Imperium, notably, was mid-last year involved in a pilot of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

In December 2023, Imperium and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC), which ran the RBA CBDC pilot, announced a pilot research project to determine the benefits of tokenisation of assets and settlements for the Australian money markets and debt capital markets.