TreasurySpring Partnership

London Stock Exchange has partnered with TreasurySpring, combining TreasurySpring’s infrastructure and technology with the London Stock Exchange’s issuer services and sustainability expertise to provide a “Sustainability Identifier” to issuers on TreasurySpring’s platform.

Our mission is to serve our customers across the funding continuum, encouraging innovation and reaffirming our commitment to supporting the growth of sustainable finance.

The collaboration aims to diversify short-term funding for financial institutions and corporations by giving them access to a new pool of institutional capital committed to sustainable investment. To date, sustainable finance has concentrated on longer-dated financing without addressing the short-term needs of borrowers and lenders.

TreasurySpring enables its clients to access a range of cash investment options in a way that simply didn’t exist before and delivers them through a simple, digital Fixed Term Fund (FTF) platform. It works with institutions holding large excess cash balances to minimise risk and maximise return on excess liquidity, whilst optimising time in the process.
For its issuers, TreasurySpring offers access to unique short-term funding sources, providing options to diversify and reduce financing costs. In a few short years, TreasurySpring has already issued FTFs worth 100’s of billions of dollars to an institutional client-base, including FTSE 100 corporations, IGOs, fund managers, charities, and family offices.

Find out more about Mitsubishi HC Capital UK PLC debut transaction on the TreasurySpring platform in October 2023.

Welcome to today's panel where we'll be discussing Mitsubishi HD Capital, UK's first sustainable issuance on the Treasury Spring fixed down fund platform in partnership with the London Stock Exchange. So today we are joined by Jeremy Johnson, who is the treasurer of, uh, MHC uk. Kevin Cook, the CEO and co-founder of Treasury Spring, and Sam dod, who is a senior manager in the London Stock Exchanges fixed income team. So will we discussing why MHC UK chose to use the platform for the first time, how it aligns with their sustainability strategy, and then the future plans and expansion for Treasury Spring. Jeremy, I'm gonna come to you first. If you could just tell me a little bit about MHC uk that would be great. MHC UK is a UK based non-bank lender, and we will lend to, uh, SMEs do leasing. We do vehicle operating lease, and, uh, about half the company is point of sale and consumer lending. Uh, we're a hundred percent owned by a Japanese parent, and we're a hundred percent self-funded, which is, um, why I'm so busy Most of the time. We, we have a number of different funding sources, but, uh, we can talk later about exactly why we're using this one. Great. And Kevin, so before we dive into the details of this specific transaction, if you could give me a bit of an overview of fixed on funds, uh, and then how the Treasury Spring platform came to be. Yeah, Of course. So, um, treasury Spring was founded as a London-based financial technology company back in 2016. Uh, and we issued the first fixed term funds through the platform in 2018. But the story, the story starts a little bit before that. Uh, so, uh, my co-founders and I have been working together in fixed income since 2006. And I guess what we realized through 2008 through the financial crisis, uh, and then in the intervening post-financial crisis period, was that there was a big gap that developed between the options that were available to, uh, large financial companies, um, whether they be asset managers, investment banks, uh, and the rest of the institutional market when it came to what they were able to do, both from a cash investment perspective and from a borrowing and funding perspective. And so really the vision for Treasury Spring was to level that playing field. And, uh, there are a number of ways that we do that. Some is through technology and providing access in a single digital efficient way for people to onboard once and get access to a broad range of cash investment options or indeed funding sources. Um, but the other way was to build infrastructure, was to really try and solve the challenges of settlement between an institution that might have excess cash and an institution that might be looking for short term funding, whatever that type of institution may be. Um, and to find a way for there to be a sort of standardized digital pipe for company A to fund company B. And so we came up with this idea that, uh, it would be much better instead of having heterogeneous complex, difficult, expensive financial infrastructure, uh, between every company A and company B, for us to build all of that infrastructure and for us to then give access to that infrastructure to our clients by means of what we call a fixed term fund or FTF. Um, and so a fixed term fund is a, think of it as a single security fund instrument where the underlying, uh, is always maturity matched to the term of the fund. So really simple example, which is where we started would be, I'm a company in the uk. I'd like to not take any bank risk potentially on my excess cash. I'd just like to get access to the UK government, but if I want to do that directly, I need a custody account, I need a dealer, I need somebody to trade it, somebody to settle it. We need a Bloomberg terminal to talk to people. These are all things that most company treasurers don't have. And so for us, they can come to our platform and they can buy, if they wanted one week exposure, they'd buy a one week UK government fixed term fund if they wanted one month exposure, a one month UK government fixed term fund. And then within that fixed term fund sat the sits the obligation that they've chosen. So in this case, the UK government for a week or a month. And so that's where we started. The first ever fixed term fund was issued through the platform 6th of June, 2018. But the vision was always to build, uh, a platform where people could access the broadest range of the best risk adjusted cash investment options, um, from the government and government like or government sponsored space, but also including banks where we provide access to secured non-secured financing. And then finally, from a corporate perspective. And so, uh, I guess what we'd witnessed, um, looking at the US versus the UK was that, um, in the US you had a very vibrant short dated corporate financing market, and it was quite common for large treasurers to put a portion of their excess cash into that short-term financing market. In the uk. The same didn't really exist. And so, uh, we really wanted to build an opportunity for a clients who had excess cash to be able to diversify away from their banks and place money directly into the corporate sector. But b, for corporates to be able to raise short-term financing from a much broader range of sources than they've been able to up until this point. Um, as we were thinking about launching the market, however, we really saw through 20 18, 20 19, 20 20 a rise in demand for sustainable solutions, whether that be from a cash investment or a financing perspective. And so when trying to launch the new corporate piece of the market, we thought it would be really helpful if we were able to find a way to quantify the sustainability credentials of our borrowers. Now we're not sustainability experts in any way. And so we looked around the market for where we thought the best independent sources of sustainability accreditation might be able to come from. Um, we had a longstanding relationship with the team at the London Stock Exchange. Um, and so approached them, I guess probably all the way back in 2019, um, to start thinking about and talking through the idea of maybe there was the possibility for us to partner where we could use our technology, our infrastructure, our regulation, our client base to distribute, uh, sustainable corporate fixed term funds out into the market. And I guess that's where the partnership with, uh, with Sam and the team at, um, the fixed income team here at LSC came from It. It works really well from our perspective as well, because our strategy has developed over time as the organization has grown. I think LSC historically has been a listing venue and, and not much more, but actually with the merger with Refinitiv, we have access to a lot of data, a lot of resource that we, we didn't before. And our strategy now really is to provide solutions for our issuers across the entire funding continuum. So that includes looking at private markets where historically, obviously London's been a public market. Um, it includes, uh, helping people with their roadshows through our Spotlight live platform, um, and also includes providing issuers with ESG data, uh, news that they can't access elsewhere, but can access through our issuer services platform. So it works really well for us. And through the issuer services platform, we're looking at solutions that all of our issuers can use, and most corporate issuers need, uh, short term funding and have short term cash investment needs as well. So, um, it was a space that we were, we were looking at, and Treasury Spring being the experts seemed like a, a really good, um, partner to, to partner with. And the sustainability angle again, is, is key to our key to our strategy. We, we launched a sustainable bond market in 2015. We now have over 500 active bonds on there, raising $300 billion equivalent for our, for our issuers. Um, we launched the voluntary carbon markets recently. Um, we have the green economy mark, which we'll, we'll uh, discuss later. Uh, and we're also still developing the market by looking at guidance for, for greens of Cooks, which we're working with ICMA and the Islamic Development Bank currently. Um, and we saw that there was a lack of sustainability in the short term space, just given the nature of, of the market and the, um, the way people look at the use of proceeds, uh, in the, in the long term space. So we saw an opportunity where we could help develop sustainable piece in, in that market and, and help it grow, which is, which is why we chose to partner with Treasury Spring. Thank you both. That's really interesting. Um, and Jeremy, you are, you're now a user of Treasury Spring. Yeah. So before you were using the platform, uh, what type of funding options were available to you? Um, I said it is very much like, uh, commercial paper for us. Um, but it said it's a lot more interesting because it meets one of our continuous objectives of trying to diversify our investor base. And in particular, uh, you know, with this, we're accessing some investors who we would never otherwise be able to access. So the structure of the fixed term fund, uh, and as you said in your objectives of what you're trying to do with, with, uh, with Treasury Spring, uh, really appeals, I think, you know, um, that it's actually probably just scratching the surface at the moment, the amount we do, but I mean, I think some of the, um, investors are actually quite small. The amounts that we want are quite large. So I'm anticipating sort of this is going to grow. Uh, and, uh, but it, it's an alternative for us. Um, I said it diversifies our investor base and it's got this additional thing that, as I mentioned earlier, we take, we do actually have an outstanding green bond and, uh, a, a private placement green bond, but they're quite long, long term and, um, big, big slugs. And together with the other forms of finance, we have a lot coming in and a lot going out. So we need short term finance to fill in, in between, and this is just right. And I really like the approach of using investor kind of rating of being, you know, from an latest G point of view rather than use of proceeds, which is actually quite clunky because as I, um, our business, 'cause we have, uh, a constant repayment agreements, it means that our assets are fully, uh, fully in or, or partially amortizing all the time, which means that if we, yeah, if we, if we send it out, if we use the proceeds to, to create a lease on a, on a green asset or something, um, that's fine. We, we, we can meet the, the criteria of a green bond that we've used the proceeds, but of course that immediately starts coming back in, in capital repayments. So, you know, it, to us, it actually kind of like, it's like a flow of fixed fund things and we needed something which fits in between. Uh, and this is additionally, um, it's really helpful to us to be able to, uh, to, uh, communicate to investors and point out the kind of, uh, uh, green credentials or ESG credentials. And that's why it's, uh, it meets kind of several criteria for us. So we've heard a little bit there about some of the benefits, but I'd love to hear from yourself. What do you think are the benefits for companies that are looking at using the Treasury Spring platform? Yeah, so I think, um, the first thing to point out is that, uh, Jeremy's and, uh, MHC UK's financing is somewhat sophisticated relative to, um, a bunch of different companies in that there aren't actually very many non-financial companies in the UK that have a commercial paper program at all. So even by having a commercial paper program out into the market, you're ahead of a lot of UK companies, um, you know, obviously have funding needs in different currencies. Absolutely. Um, and been accessing the capital markets for a long time. As I said, that's not typical. And so for us, the first thing that we're often doing to people is educating them on the fact that, uh, capital markets financing can be a very useful addition, not necessarily alternative, but addition to the financing that they'll receive from their banks, whether that be via revolving credit facilities or working capital lines. Um, the second thing that Jeremy mentioned is diversification. So, um, our clients are typically anybody from FSE 100 corporations all the way through to SMEs. And in between we have, uh, charities, we have family offices, we have private fund managers. These are people who typically aren't banks and don't buy, uh, commercial paper. And so even if you do have a commercial paper program as M-H-C-U-K does, um, the investors that you access through that will be very different to the investors that you access through our platform. So today we have, uh, about 370 clients. Um, uh, I think I can confidently say that none of those clients buys commercial paper at all. So that's 370 people that you've never reach through a commercial paper program. And those from a financing perspective, those people are often uncorrelated to the banking sector, uncorrelated to the asset management sector. And so the risk, you know, that I guess most treasury CFOs are often trying to protect against is what happens if all the taps get turned off at once? How do I make sure that I've got contingency and redundancy? Don't say that, that worries Me. That's exactly what it is. Um, and so for us, what we're enabling people to do is to have another option to make sure that there's always liquidity that can flow from, from different sources. Um, I guess the aim also over time is that, uh, as we build, uh, and the market builds, uh, there should be pricing benefits to this. Um, and maybe we can talk a bit more about sustainability, pricing benefits and greenham and how that sort of thing might play in as the market develops. Um, and then the other thing is ease of execution. So, uh, you know, building a commercial paper program or doing any form of capital markets financing generally is pretty cumbersome and time consuming and expensive. Um, and so what we worked really, really hard on was coming up with a, an easy way for people to do this a better way. Um, and so we've got a standardized short form loan agreement, which is sort of 15 pages, and of that eight pages is boilerplate. Um, and then once you've done that, you onboard to the platform, very simple process, and then you can immediately get access. So it's a very lightweight from a, uh, onboarding and, uh, integration lift perspective. Um, and then I guess sort of finally, which Jeremy touched on, uh, is the sustainability benefits, but maybe I leave Sam to, to talk more about how We think about it. Yeah, exactly. And, and all the, the benefits you've just listed is, you know, what we're trying to provide to our, to our clients as well. So again, it it, it fits in with our, our strategy And, and as Jeremy mentioned, the, the use of proceeds popularity of that format in the long-term bond space doesn't, doesn't work for the short-term debt space because it's rare that you are gonna be using money that you've borrowed for 30 days for, uh, to build a wind farm or, or something like that, or put into a green asset. So it doesn't quite work. So when we were developing the, uh, accreditation and, and thinking about how we could help Kevin and his team, we were looking at issuer level criteria. How could we say that an issuer level, they were working towards sustainability goals? So the three criteria that we came up with using the resources that that we have and the data that we have, um, were, uh, the using the green economy mark, which we give to our listed issuers that have 50% of revenues coming, um, uh, coming from, uh, resources that, uh, focus on, um, environmental objectives. Uh, we have lseg ESG scores, and we said that anyone that has a score of b plus or higher would qualify. And lastly, using the sustainable bond market, which I mentioned before, if an issuer is listed on there, um, and their ICMA framework aligns to the green or social bond principles of 2020, or sorry, 2021 or the sustainability linked bond principles of, uh, 2020, then they would also qualify because those ICMA principles have the qualify that you need an issuer level strategy to align with those. So it simply can't just be a use of proceeds bond. It has to, you have to, as a company, demonstrate that you're doing more. And, and that's what what Mitsubishi, um, have, have done there. And just to maybe add a couple of things on that. So from our perspective on working with Sam and the team to, to construct this, I guess people are quite familiar generally with credit ratings and credit markets and you know, there's this concept of being investment grade from a credit perspective, which generally means, you're know, you're in the upper deciles of, um, the credit quality that you could have as a corporation in whatever particular sector you might be operating in. Um, I guess the appealing thing of using the lseg, uh, ESG scores was you could use a similar principle and you could come up with a look. This is a company that is genuinely in the kind of investment grade area of its particular industry, um, at this particular time when it comes to looking at sustainability credentials. And then the other thing looking at the ICMA principles was, um, it was really important to us that the companies that we work with aren't just doing one sustainability project that, uh, they can hive off and have some funds that flow towards, but that as a business, they're really working on the green transition on being a sustainability company at its core. And I think from our conversations with treasurers, from our conversations with CFOs, you know, that's what people were looking for when it comes to the sustainability characteristics of any, either cash investments or borrowing that they're taking was some comfort that when people are reporting internally, they could get their hands on, okay, now this is a, not just a green issuance, this is a green issuer, um, or an ESG issuer that is, um, that meets, um, some nice objective criteria that can be measured against. And so we've had there, um, quite a few reasons why companies might want to use the platform. So I am curious, what was the catalyst for you deciding to use treasury springing? Well, of course, the charm of the people we deal with. I mean, that was the main catalyst. Uh, um, as I said, I, I think probably, um, that being ready to, uh, hear an alternative I think is probably the, the key, because otherwise you would think, oh, well, I'll just continue what I'm doing. And we would refer to that before and we discussed it, is that, um, I think, uh, people when they're investing, et cetera, tend to kind of follow a path well trodden and, um, maybe it takes a bit of, um, courage to go and look at something different and say, actually no, I have to investigate this and find out what the pitfalls may or may not be. Or, you know, get it cleared from a legal and a tax point of view, et cetera. But once you've done those things, um, yeah, it, it's, um, it's kind of like, yeah, I'm just waiting for it to grow even more now. So we've talked a lot already about sustainability, and we know that many businesses are trying to embed sustainability across their businesses. Um, how are you finding that you are able to embed sustainability in your, uh, funding strategy? We We're a take of funds. So it's really what investors want to do. So, uh, in, in terms of strategy, we will move our funding to what the I invest the investors want to do. And, uh, what I'm finding, uh, when I talk to investors and we selling, uh, longer term debt is that I would say maybe 80 or 90% of them, um, are not actually actively looking for a green investment. 10% of them are because they're, they've labeled their fund or something as being green or, uh, ESG or sustainable, whatever. Um, but most of them, the, the key for them is to view that the, um, the business they're investing in is heading in the right direction. It's got the right strategy. And, you know, and, and a kind of like, as a slight negative filter to that, which is that they're not investing in what may become stranded assets in the future because of the change in, uh, what's happening in the environment, et cetera. That those assets, those assets are okay to invest in because the transition is very important. But, you know, if you are investing in a company that has got those kind of assets, you need to be very carefully about that company strategy and what their investment horizon is. Because if you're investing in something which is gonna be completely useless in six years time, it's probably not a good idea to lend to them more than six years is, I mean, so, uh, I I think we're of, um, very much adapting to, uh, how it's changing in, in the marketplace. And that is one of the comment I would make is, is that, um, you know, the ICMA principles, the other principles that the use of proceeds or whether it should be kind of more orientated around, uh, uh, is sustainable issuer as it were, rather than, uh, use of proceeds. All those things are kind of changing all the time. It's quite new. And, uh, um, you know, as those things change, then, then we will change as well. That's a point that, uh, the point of the fact that everything's changing is something that not only have we witnessed idiosyncratically, but we saw in the results of the surveys that we've done over the last couple of years in partnership with, um, with the LSE in relation to, uh, sustainable cash investing and sustainable finance, which is there's a significant, uh, demand for both. I think people feel the pressure internally, they should be looking at these things, but there's a clear lack of direction, I think in the market. There's a lack of certainty around what sustainable financing or sustainable cash investing is supposed to mean. Um, and that's natural because it's a relatively, uh, we're relatively early in the evolution of those markets. Um, but I think it's very clear that, uh, they're only going to evolve in one direction over the course of the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years. Um, I remember, uh, listening to Julia Hogge, the CEO of the London Stock Exchange, talk about the development of new markets and describing them as a sort of five year, five year process, which is, it's five years to figure it out, get it into place, actually build it, and then another five years after that before you really get adoption of it. And I think, you know, that's where you kind of are and sustainable, uh, the sustainable finance, short-term financing and sustainable, um, cash investing markets, sustainable bonds, obviously much further along. Um, but that's why I think it's super important to be able to have objective standards that people can hang their hat on and aren't going to sort of blow in the wind from week to week or month to month. Which I guess is why we settled on the criteria and the partnership that we did. You've kind of touched on it a little bit already, but what do you see as some of those challenges that your client's facing in certain yourself as well in embedding sustainability? Other than the fact that this is a long term strategy, Me or Jeremy, Whoever wants to answer first. Um, I was a little bit kind of, uh, when you say what are the challenges, um, I was kind of like a little bit shocked to discover just how much it cost us to do the green reporting. Uh, and I mean, maybe it's 'cause it's early days and because it's, um, you know, I mean we are used to spending, you know, a shed load of money doing our financial reporting, but obviously that's essential. Um, this is kind of like an extra thing and suddenly a whole bunch of other people that are there to do it. And maybe that's gonna get more refined and more integrated into our financial reporting. And I think when it does get more integrated, then perhaps it won't be so obvious what the additional cost is, but there, there is Yeah. Surprising additional cost to it. So that was, that's a bit of a challenge. Yeah. Um, and there's a slight, I mean, it's not no big deal, but obviously you've gotta go out there and measure, um, you have to sort of like, um, start recording additional information about your assets, which, you know, 'cause obviously we've got gazillions of assets 'cause we've got some very, you know, we are not in the consumer space 'cause we don't actually ask people what they use their loans for, but in the rest of the other half of the company, you know, we have to say, okay, you know, is this what, what's the CO2 emission of this car? Is it meeting the kind of criteria? 'cause at the moment you can include hybrid cars, but not, um, but I think it's within two years or something. We won't be able to include those anymore in what is classified as a green asset. So, um, yeah, it's kind of, there's additional work. Yeah, I suppose, but then I would moan about that, wouldn't I? No, I, I can certainly relate to that. So I work in our sustainability team Yes. And there's a huge piece of European reg, uh, regulation at the moment called CSRD, which you may be familiar with coming, um, coming. It's on its way. Yeah. Um, and as part of that, the, the maximum amount of disclosures that you have to make is over a thousand different pieces of information. And so this is just an immense amount of work, which is increasingly coming towards our finance teams. Yeah. And I think, again, as you're in the infancy of a market, if people aren't sure exactly what might be important to collect over the course of time, the temptation is to say, well, let's just collect everything and then we'll refine that. Which from a, maybe from a regulator's perspective or from a, um, market development perspective can make some sense. But for the fact that the people who actually have to go out and collect the data might then be dissuaded from doing it because it's too much of a burden and too much of a hurdle. And so I think there's definitely a, a challenge with that, I think as well as the lack of direction that, um, I mentioned a little bit earlier like that taking that so that it's extreme is a fear of greenwashing, which we definitely saw probably 20 22, 20 23, we saw, um, you know, you'd had this groundswell of, uh, importance being attached to sustainability and then people either really trying to do the right thing or jumping on the bandwagon, sort of depending on who you're talking to, and then some people looking at someone. And actually that's not what we mean and that's not what the market thinks should, is an appropriate benchmark for sustainability. And so I think for a lot of people who were kind of already in the process of saying, okay, I really wanna do this, I want to embed it, it's important for us, it caused a lot of people to step back and say, okay, I'm trying to do the right thing here, but I'm worried that in trying to do the right thing, I'm actually gonna be criticized or for getting something wrong. And because there's that lack of direction and clarity, do I have the incentive to step forward and, and try and do this? Or am I better to just sit back and let other people take those steps for us? And so I think, um, that's definitely a challenge for people. And I guess that's why, you know, we're grateful to people like the, uh, LSE and to, I mean, c for I guess putting our heads above the power of pet a little bit and saying, this might not be perfect. I'm sure it's gonna iterate, and I'm sure we'll get to a point that in some years might look slightly different to it does today, but we're all trying to do the right thing and we all believe in this, and therefore we're gonna kind of, uh, vote with our feet to some Extent. The other challenge I think that we're seeing is with the, the development of the market, the sustainability linked bonds, we're seeing more and more of those and trying to choose KPIs that are aggressive enough, I think is a real challenge for, for corporates because they don't want to be seen to be, um, gaming the system and, and choosing very achievable targets, but they also want to make sure they do achieve them and don't have to have to then pay that coupon step up. Now, I think you'd argue that if every single sustainability linked bond hits every single target, then the market isn't being aggressive enough. So I think you did, you would want to see some people not hit their targets at, at a group level rather than, you know, I wouldn't want it to say, I want that issuer to, to fail to meet its targets, but I think generally for the market it'd be quite good. But I think we're, um, investors are still trying to decide what's, what's aggressive enough. And I think corporates are, they say corporates are looking at what the investors want. So I think there's that back and forth at the moment. I would say from my experience that, um, that is a, um, a trap to go down to say, okay, I'm gonna achieve this target. Is it, is it, I would question whether it's really worth it because I mean, on our bond issuances, we find maybe on a public deal you get sort of two, maybe three basis points advantage from it being a green bond from not being so, and if you consider the the step up cost of not meeting that target, then, uh, that didn't really pay off did it to do. And it says, yeah, it's a really interesting calibration, isn't it? Because, uh, Sam and I were having a conversation with a treasurer who should remain name, who sort of said like, I feel like from a philosophical perspective I should be almost setting these targets at a level where I expect to fail because that's what I should be doing as a company, but if I do economically, that doesn't make any sense and that's my job. And so I think these are the things that we have to kind of work our way through and the market has to center in on, but it takes people to try in order to, to be able to find the truth. So taking us back to this debut transaction, which has been a really good example of the partnership with the London Stock Exchange, Sam, what do you expect from the future and the expansion of this partnership? Yeah, I think from our perspective, from the LSC, we want to raise awareness. We want to make sure all our issuers know that they have this option for them. As you said, we've, we want to ensure that everyone has a diversification of, of funding sources of, of investors, and all markets are available to them. So raising awareness is gonna be a, a big piece. And I think, you know, unfortunately not everyone's like Jeremy and, and, and, uh, the team there where they're willing to try these new, new things. But now that we've actually moved from, you know, away from the theoretical to actually a real world application of this, I think we will start to see some fast followers that, that are, you know, have seen the success of, of it from, from Jeremy and his team and are then willing to, to take that leap and, and do it as well. So I think it's a bit of a, a snowball effect where we'll see it start to to to grow. Um, as well, just from a a, a macroeconomic environment with, with rates going higher, with cost of funding being higher, the potential benefits of using a a treasury spring platform is, is going to be greater. So again, people are gonna be, um, looking at it more closely and seeing how they can reduce their cost of funding. And that's gonna be through diversification of options, choosing what's right for you in, in that moment. So yeah, for us it's going to be ensuring that, uh, that everyone knows that they can, they can use this. I guess from, from my perspective, um, I view the corporate issuance and the sustainable corporate issuance piece of this as a little bit of a microcosm of our broader business. So as I mentioned, we started the broader business back in 2016. It took two and a half years to issue the first fixed term fund. Um, you know, we grew at a reasonably, uh, you know, fast, but um, not stellar rate for the first period because it took a while for people to get their heads around this and to trust the adoption of it and for people to do the cumulative due diligence, whether that be legal or operational or tax or what have you, in order to get their, their heads around it. Um, and then sort of once we were a little while into it, uh, we really saw it start to take off and reach a tipping point. And there was market adoption, um, you know, to the point where today, as I mentioned, 375 clients up from, you know, probably 118 months ago. Um, and we've also seen a total issuance through the platform, uh, really skyrocket. So we've done the best part of, um, a hundred billion dollars worth of issuance through our platform across all of the products that we offer. Um, and so I guess we view this in, in the same way, which is, you know, we're very grateful for our early adopters and the people who've helped to, um, to build the first iterations of it, but there's no reason why if you are any corporate, uh, originally in the UK that has, uh, an investment grade credit rating that's looking to raise short term financing, this should be a tool that should have some application somewhere in your toolkit. So that's the goal for us. And then beyond that, uh, moving all sorts of companies that don't have and haven't issued any capital markets financing before. So interestingly through uh, COVID, we saw the Bank of England have to rush to create the CSSF, um, the in order to, sorry, CCFF collateral Commercial Funding Facility, there we go, difficult acronym. Um, but um, that was because they realized that there was all of these corporations, which were important to Britain, important to the country that suddenly were very dependent on a banking sector, that they didn't know how it was gonna play out through Covid and what the impacts on that were gonna be. And so you ended up with a lot of these sort of quasi commercial paper programs being set up, um, in order to solve this potential problem. But if this had existed back then, you wouldn't have needed to worry about that. And so that's the vision, is that really, you know, to get to a point where it becomes a part of everyday financing for corporations originally in the uk. And then beyond that as also, well, From my point of view, I mean, all I do all the time we're trying to access investors. I mean that, that's, that's the key. And this is a way of accessing some investors I would've never, ever been able to get anywhere near. Um, it just works. I think it's very efficient. The the point is, is to access those investors as efficiently as possible. If you, if those investors go via anybody else's balance sheet, then that's gonna be an economic cost to that. There has to be reserve asset requirement, et cetera. And you're just like, you are, you are paying up something and you're losing something between the investor, uh, uh, and the borrower. So, um, I'm gonna use that word that I think was quite common in the eighties, which is ization, which I can just about say. And and that's what it's about. And it's about using and applying technology and the, the, the, the, the, the Treasury Spring is using, um, it's partly technology, partly the structure and how it's done and how it's, uh, structured through the Channel islands, et cetera, uh, through a very neat bit of use of law, which, um, seems to work very well to us. Um, I think it's got all the hallmarks and, and, and I believe there is, uh, I may be mistaken, but I believe there's an awful lot of, um, unutilized cash out there in sort of the world of business and SMEs and sort of slightly larger companies. And I think this may be a way of very efficiently accessing that. Uh, and I just, I maybe I, I sort, you know, my hope is wrong, but I think it is actually quite big because, uh, having discussed it with sort of like a number of banks and et cetera of their saying what they have as, as deposits and what's actually ends up sitting around on accounts, uh, and occasionally there I say what we have left sitting around on accounts very disappointingly. Um, yeah, I think actually this could, uh, go a long way. Maybe just one thing to conclude on that, to give an idea of where it, it might go. If you look at the US market, for example, I think the volume of, uh, corporate commercial paper issuance is more than 50 times greater than, than it is in the uk. Um, and obviously the US market is bigger than it is in the uk, but not by anything like that scale. And so I think there's an awfully long way for us to go in terms of non-financial issuance of short term debt. But commercial paper was, uh, from a time a little earlier ago with a slightly different, more clunky legal framework, um, less technologically advanced. And so hopefully this can be, um, a good tool for people going forward. Great. Well, thank you all very much for an interesting discussion today, and congratulations again for the debut transaction on Treasury Spring. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

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1

Sign a simple, short-form unsecured facility agreement via the TreasurySpring platform.
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Specify the desired amount, term, currency and rate of financing.
3

Go live on the TreasurySpring platform, enabling investors to view the offering.
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The London Stock Exchange will provide the Sustainability Identifier to TreasurySpring to display alongside issuers on its platform. This will utilise LSEG’s sustainability offering to identify companies that display certain ESG metrics or are contributing to the green and sustainable economy through their business activity and funding frameworks.

To be considered for the Sustainability Identifier, an issuer must meet at least one of the following criteria:

Have a LSEG ESG score of at least B+. The LSEG ESG score is designed to transparently and objectively measure a company’s relative ESG performance, based on company-reported data. A company with a score of at least B+ ranks in the top third of its peer group. The scores can be found on Sustainability Ratings and Data.

Have been provided the London Stock Exchange’s Green Economy Mark, available to issuers listed on the London Stock Exchange’s equity markets that generate 50% or more of total annual revenues from products and services that contribute to the global green economy (drawing upon FTSE Russell’s Green Revenues Classification System (GRCS)). More details about the Mark can be found on Green Economy Mark.

Display its securities on the Sustainable Bond Market (SBM) (the latest list of the securities on SBM found on Issuers and Instruments Specialist bonds Reports, with its published ESG framework aligning with the below standards and described explicitly as doing so in a Second Party Opinion:

the ICMA Green Bond Principles 2021,

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FTFs can provide access to financial institutions, sovereigns, supranationals or corporations.

All issuance vehicles on the TreasurySpring platform are regulated by the Jersey Financial Services Commission as alternative investment funds pursuant to the Alternative Investment Funds (Jersey) Regulations 2012.

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