GPS on the Road

As we wind down toward the Christmas break, it’s a great time to look back on two events that energized our division, sharpened our roadmap for securities services, and reinforced the importance of being on the ground: our Group Prime Services workshop in Vienna and SIBOS 2025 in Frankfurt.

In September our Group Prime Services community – colleagues from custody and brokerage across the Head Office and NWUs – reunited for an inspiring two-day GPS Workshop with one clear goal: scaling what works best across the group.

Day One opened with a board update from Valerie Brunner, followed by a GPS Group update from Christian Geberth, Martin Hofer, Bettina Janoschek, Radek Ignatowicz, Carolin Wichtl-Willburger, Günter Englhart, and Stefan Wallner, each sharing priorities and opportunities ahead. A standout moment was the guest talk from Gunter Deuber, Chief Economist and Head of Raiffeisen Research, who unpacked global and CEE economic developments and their influence on financial markets – fueling a lively debate on how to position GPS businesses in a changing environment.

We then turned to re-use in action: Christian Schreier and Laszlo Ceglédi presented how Raiffeisen Bank Hungary has adopted and implemented RBI’s Global Investor Gate platform for institutional clients within the Raiffeisen Bank Hungary IT framework. Our AI special forces – Patrick Heuschober and Mark Tallai – showcased the first practical custody AI use case aimed at automating agent disclosure requests using the Chat GPT engine. The day closed with a T+1 impact presentation moderated by Margit Hybek and Radek Ignatowicz, followed by the Group GPS Strategy, focusing on advancing data analytics and benchmarking tools to help steer our business.

Day Two shifted to innovation and strategy. Heike Arbter shared perspectives on Certificates & EDI (the Easy Digital Investment retail app), underlining RBI’s strong market position and an ambitious plan for further development aligned with the five-year economic outlook for European financial markets. Günter Englhart deepened the discussion with Cash Markets & Derivatives Sales Trading products, including an engaging Brokerage strategy game. Interactive breakout sessions challenged teams to design approaches to increase market share and improve the Cost/Income ratio, with results presented and debated in plenary. Stefan Kucera wrapped up with a Fund Brokerage product update, highlighting the dynamics of the fund industry and evolving client preferences.

The workshop’s message is simple: “Partnership and creativity — building success together!”

On of the biggest highlights on the last quarter was also SIBOS 2025 in Frankfurt. It was a timely reminder: securities services are evolving from incremental improvement projects into core infrastructure work that will define how markets operate over the next decade. The scene at SIBOS moved quickly from tactical questions about onboarding and corporate actions to strategic conversations about tokenization, stablecoins and direct market access. Our GPS team returned with fresh momentum, concrete opportunities, and a clearer roadmap for how to help clients navigate through this transformation.

Over four days, we held approximately 35 meetings with global custodians, ICSDs, custodial banks, and market infrastructure providers, and hosted many conversations at our booth under the main theme “Make global partnerships happen.” These exchanges strengthened relationships, clarified shared challenges, and generated concrete ideas for collaboration – reminding us that we are always stronger together, especially amid pronounced infrastructure shifts and significant uncertainty about the future.

What stood out for securities services:

• Digital assets are moving from experiment to infrastructure
  Conversations at the event made one thing clear: digital assets are no longer a niche topic. Stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets are being discussed as infrastructure-level components — not speculative add-ons. 
• Interoperability and regulation are the twin constraints. 
  A recurring challenge is interoperability: varied token formats, settlement rails and local market practices create friction. Regulatory clarity — improving in some jurisdictions — is accelerating adoption where it appears. Europe must continue to accelerate its regulatory and standards work to remain competitive globally. 
• Direct-access expansion: new markets matter.
  Interest in expanding direct-access models eastward was high. Several market participants showed tangible interest in connecting to emerging regional central securities depositories to enable international investor access. We are currently evaluating connecting to the Uzbekistan Central Securities Depository to extend our direct-access model. 
• Rebuild with Ukraine.
  The "Rebuild with Ukraine" initiative has been highly appreciated. We emphasized that, together with local colleagues, we are actively supporting market infrastructure to keep access for international investors open. We received positive signals from multiple partners; however, significant inflows and larger-scale investments are likely to materialize only in a post‑war environment. In the meantime, continued coordination, capacity building and regulatory clarity will be essential to ensure the market is ready to welcome increased capital when the time comes.
• People, talent, and recognition.
  SIBOS also highlighted the next generation of industry leaders. Our colleague Oleksandra Kucher participated in the STAR Scholarship Program and shared powerful views on leadership and inclusion: “Diversity is not about who is sitting in the room, but whether that room is ready to listen.” - she mentioned in her interview.
• Operational excellence wins trust 
  We received strong, direct feedback praising our end‑to‑end operational setup and product expertise in Central and Eastern Europe. That operational credibility — from onboarding to reconciliation and corporate actions — was a decisive factor in many discussions and continues to differentiate our securities services offering.

SIBOS generated strong, tangible interest in our securities services capabilities: several major custodians, ICSDs and regional banks have asked us to follow up on RFPs and explore pilot connections to new markets, while others requested detailed proposals and technical integration plans for broker‑to‑custody and regional custody coverage. 

Taken together, these outcomes sharpen our roadmap: blend pragmatic operational readiness with targeted technical innovation to enhance our product offering.

From all of us in Group Prime Services: thank you to everyone who joined, shared, and pushed the ideas forward this year. Wishing you a restful holiday season and a productive start to 2026 — we look forward to sharing the journey with you next year.

If you’d like to discuss tokenization roadmaps, market access strategies, or operational transformation for securities services, get in touch with us via rbi-gps@rbinternational.com.

Best wishes,
Your Group Prime Services