Two major players in Japan are exploring the efficacy of such a platform.
In Tokyo, two prominent companies are taking an innovative approach to back-office operations by exploring the possibility that a common data platform might resolve a lot of Ops woes.
Grygo is the chief content officer for FTF & FTF News.
JPX Market Innovation & Research (JPXI), a subsidiary of the Japan Exchange Group (JPX) focused on JPX’s data, digital, and index businesses, and Japan Securities Finance (JSF), a provider of funding and securities for margin trading, are working together to “advance discussions on building an industry-wide common data platform” that would aggregate a variety of corporate and transaction information and “distribute this information in a format conducive to automated processing,” according to an announcement earlier this month. Their goal is to improve the accuracy and efficiency of back-office operations for securities firms everywhere.
JPXI and JSF officials say they “will seek to build a common data platform that aggregates not only the wide range of data held by Japan Exchange Group but also the various types of data held by JSF, and to provide this data in a format suitable for automated processing.” The combined effort follows JPXI’s announcement in February that it had launched a study about an industry-wide common data platform.
JSF would know a lot about data concerns as it “conducts margin loan operations, lending the funds and securities necessary for standardized margin transactions to securities companies and other entities. It also provides notices and publishes information related to restrictions on loans for margin transactions (such as warnings and application suspensions), the handling of rights, and the selection of stocks eligible for loans for margin transactions,” officials add.
FTF News asked about the kinds of data that would be processed via the common data platform to come. “We are currently focusing on corporate information and transaction-related information that is published by Japan Exchange Group (JPX) and JSF through websites and PDF documents,” a spokesperson says.
“More specifically, the following types of information are under consideration:
- Corporate actions, such as new listings, delistings, capital increases, and share splits [ https://www.jpx.co.jp/english/listing/stocks/new/index.html ]
- Transaction-related information, such as Treatment of rights for, restrictions on, and other events for loans for margin transactions, and price limit handling events [ https://www.taisyaku.jp/news/ ].”
The backers of the common data platform have no intention to limit the scale of their efforts to Japanese financial markets.
“While the data to be distributed consists of market-related data from the Japanese market, we plan to provide this service to global users as well,” the spokesperson says.
It also appears that JPX and JSF want the common data platform to solve major business problems.
“Currently, market participants check corporate and trading-related information published by JPX and JSF on websites or in PDF format, and then manually extract and reflect the information in their internal systems,” the spokesperson says. “By consolidating this information into a common data platform and providing it in a format that is easy to process programmatically, we expect to reduce both the operational burden associated with manual work and the risk of human error. This will contribute to improved efficiency across the Japanese securities industry and enable market participants to focus more on value creation.”
“There are no changes to the target timing for the launch of the production service and the release of the beta environment previously announced by JPXI on February 12, 2026,” the spokesperson says. JPX and JSF officials say they plan to launch the service in the spring of next year after beta testing in early 2027.
“This is intended to enable market stakeholders to verify whether the platform can contribute to improving the efficiency and sophistication of their operations, as well as to test its integration into actual business processes,” according to the JPXI announcement in February. “So far, we have been working with multiple market stakeholders, including Mizuho Securities Co., Ltd., Daiwa Securities Co., Ltd., and Daiwa Institute of Research Ltd., to gather feedback on data distribution requirements and other matters.”
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