Key initiatives defined in Moscow Exchange’s strategy for 2012-2015 have been successfully completed: the Central Securities Depository (CSD) was created, the NCC began functioning as the CCP across all of the Group’s markets, the Equity & Bond Market migrated to the T+ settlement cycle and Russian securities became available for settlement through the ICSD infrastructure. In March 2015, the Supervisory Board adopted a new strategy that sets out Moscow Exchange Group’s key goals for 2015-2020.

The core of the Group’s vision is to become a global financial centre for capital raising, price discovery, settlement, risk- and capital-management across all Russian asset classes, and to create the most efficient and transparent financial market infrastructure in the region, offering diversified, competitive and integrated services for any capital markets related activities.

The Group’s new mission is to promote economic growth in Russia and contribute to the restructuring of the Russian economy by expanding capital-raising opportunities for issuers and facilitating a client-friendly, safe and transparent environment for local and international investors.

The Group’s 2015-2020 strategy focuses on five core pillars.

Diversification

The Group is the leading trading, clearing and settlement venue across all major classes of Russian assets, including traditional OTC products (bonds, repo, FX). The Group’s unified infrastructure provides convenient access for participants to all the Exchange’s markets and facilities stable returns for shareholders regardless of the economic cycle, setting Moscow Exchange apart from other exchange groups globally. The Group has unrealised potential for further diversification through the development of its infrastructure services offering: information products (including distribution of market data, corporate information centre, price centre and repository), technological services for market participants and end investors, calculation and licensing of new indexes and other market benchmarks, clearing of OTC derivatives and on-exchange trading of transportable commodities.

Penetration

The development of the Russian financial market is essential for further liquidity growth across all classes of Russian financial assets. Developing the local retail and institutional investor base and attracting new quality issuers and placements to Moscow Exchange are the long-term priorities of the Group; their execution is essentially dependent on the successful execution of regulatory reforms. To achieve its strategic targets for market penetration, the Group will focus on increasing financial literacy among local investors, and on developing, marking and promoting new products based on demand from local market participants, including new publicly traded debt instruments.

Sophistication

The Group brings together the key infrastructure organisations of the Russian financial market (trading venue, CCP and CSD). However, the Group’s markets are not completely integrated in clearing and settlement terms. A sophisticated post-trade service offering is seen by the Group’s management as a long-term competitive advantage for Moscow Exchange globally. Integration of collateral and risk management products will increase infrastructure efficiency and the attractiveness of the Group’s product offering to market participants. Key strategic initiatives include unification of the risk-management system across different markets, including cross-market margining functionality; establishment of a single clearing and settlement pool and single collateral pool across all of the Group’s markets; and development of new collateral management and tri-party services.

Standardisation

Standardisation of the Russian market infrastructure is aimed at enhancing the appeal of the local infrastructure for international investors to attract their liquidity flows and boosting its competitiveness vis-à-vis foreign platforms. The key priorities of the Group in this area are protecting the rights of market participants and investors, simplifying access to trading and clearing for international investors, optimising document flows and technical interaction between the Exchange and market participants/investors, developing the CSD product line and being a standard-bearer for good corporate governance practices at Russian companies.

Optimisation

Optimisation of key business processes is crucial for successful execution of the Group’s strategy and necessary to ensure continued robustness of market infrastructure, reduction of infrastructure-related costs for market participants and long-term growth of shareholder value. The key priorities are enhancing corporate culture, increasing the quality of client service, harmonising business processes enabled by the new IT platform, and implementing cost-cutting and tariff-optimisation programs.