Alex Royle Joins Archax as Chief of Compliance

Archax, a UK based digital securities exchange recently revealed the appointment of new executive to its executive committee. As per statement released by the firm, it has onboarded Mr. Alex Royle to serve as its new Chief Compliance Officer effective immediately. The incoming executive is a veteran in finance services industry and has more than a decade of experience under his belt brining with him extensive knowledge and expertise in compliance and regulatory verticals.

The firm primarily focuses on institutional and professional investors as well as all types of digital securities globally. The firm is currently in final stages of its application to operate a multi-lateral trading facility (MTF) in London and is at phase of consideration by UK’s official watchdog – Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) prior to its launch some time later this year. This makes Alex’s appointment at the firm a key move by the company to ensure its success in launch of its MTF service in UK market.

Alex’s appointment is considered as critical given Alex’s contribution in leading the supervisory effort of a number of the most innovative MTFs at UK FCA until he took up his new role with Archax. Alex served as a part of UK’s regulatory authority for total of two and a half years during which he served as part of Equity Market & Derivatives Market Supervision teams and as member of MTF/OTF Trading Venue Supervision. He took a short hiatus post serving at FCA for 20 months to do a short stint at European Securities and Market Authority as Seconded National Expert for Market Policy.

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The new MTF service which Archax launches will see major real world assets such as equity, debt, property and funds take on toknised form via blockchain tech thereby modernizing and simplifying the process of raising capital by removing friction and middlemen. This move is also expected to bring more liquidity to currently hard to trade assets through fractional ownership and the creation of secondary markets which trade globally.

Commenting on his new role at the firm, Alex Royle said, “Having seen the wave in interest building around regulated instruments leveraging blockchain and tokenisation technologies, particularly from an institutional angle, I was keen to find a way to utilize my extensive experience in the emerging digital securities space. Archax, with its highly experienced team from the financial markets, clear strategy and vision, and its attitude towards regulation, clearly has the proposition to legitimize the space at the institutional level. Having been involved with the FCA’s strategy around crypto and tokenized assets, I now look forward to helping launch the first genuinely institutional market for these instruments, as well as ensuring that the Archax offerings meet the most stringent of requirements”.

Commenting on the new appointment, Graham Rodford – CEO & Co-Founder of Archax said, “Archax is designed to be ‘institutional’ throughout – it’s technology, systems, operations, processes, team, culture and products. Therefore, compliance and regulation are at the very forefront of our strategy. We see the tokenisation of assets as the next significant and regulated step in the evolution of the crypto world and something that could potentially revolutionize traditional financial markets too. Consequently, Chief Compliance Officer is a vital role for us to fill and we are pleased to have Alex with his highly relevant cross-asset experience, from both the regulator and business side, in this pivotal position”.