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At FIA Boca 2026, I joined David Greely from SmarterMarketsTM to discuss what matters most in today's collateral landscape: volatility, liquidity and the infrastructure firms need to respond with confidence.
In the conversation, I shared my perspective on:
- Surging margin and collateral calls in more volatile markets
- Why scalable, cloud-native infrastructure matters when operational pressure rises
- The importance of real-time transparency and optimisation across cash, bonds, equities and other eligible assets
- The role tokenised assets, particularly money market funds, could play in expanding collateral pools.
Resilience under pressure
Markets have a way of reminding us what matters most. In calmer periods, firms can treat collateral management as an efficiency question. In more volatile periods, it becomes a test of resilience, scalability and control.
We're seeing exactly this kind of environment today. Higher volatility, sharper market moves and more pressure on liquidity mean margin and collateral calls can rise quickly, putting operational processes and technology stacks under real strain. In moments like these, the gap between a platform that copes and one built to scale becomes very clear.
At CloudMargin, we've spent the last few years building and enhancing a platform designed for exactly these conditions. As a cloud-native SaaS solution, it scales with demand and gives firms the stability and flexibility they need when markets become more stressed and workflows more intense.
For us, this is not only about handling higher volumes. It's about helping clients manage collateral in a more controlled and informed way. Real-time transparency across assets, flexible eligibility management and the ability to decide what to post, how to post it and where to use it all help firms respond more effectively.
Collateral optimisation has also become much more relevant than it was five or six years ago. In a lower-rate environment, with more stable conditions, the opportunity cost of tied-up assets often felt less urgent. Today, with high-quality liquid assets under greater pressure and firms paying closer attention to balance sheet efficiency, optimisation is central to effective risk and liquidity management.
The underlying collateral set is still familiar in many ways. Government bonds, cash in multiple currencies and, depending on the agreement, equities and certain commodities all continue to play important roles. At the same time, the conversation is widening, and one of the strongest themes in the market right now is tokenisation.
For tokenisation to matter, liquidity comes first
Tokenisation has been part of the conversation in financial services for years, though it now feels as if things are moving into a more practical phase. Tokenised money market funds are drawing serious attention because they could expand the pool of assets available for collateral use while preserving the qualities the market values most: quality, liquidity and operational utility.
Liquidity sits at the heart of this. In collateral management, the value of an asset is not only about what it looks like on paper, it’s about how easily it can be used, moved and relied on when markets come under stress. If an asset is illiquid, it will usually attract a steeper haircut, reducing its value as collateral and forcing firms to over-collateralise.
For tokenisation to matter, it needs to be applied to assets with deep, dependable liquidity, or create new usable liquidity for the market. Tokenising highly liquid instruments such as money market funds could unlock new efficiencies and broader collateral utility. Tokenising assets without solving the liquidity question is far less compelling.
It's also important to stay realistic about the pace of adoption. Financial services is a deeply regulated industry, and rightly so. Firms operate across complex legacy infrastructures and cannot take unnecessary operational or regulatory risk in core workflows simply for the sake of innovation.
So, the next step is proof. Large-scale industry sandboxes and proof-of-concept initiatives will be important signposts over the coming year. The real questions are whether these models work at scale, whether institutions can integrate them into existing technology stacks, and whether they can move from experimentation into real adoption and revenue.
My view is cautious and optimistic. There's more momentum behind tokenisation today than there was a few years ago, and more of the right participants appear to be engaged. Asset holders, infrastructure providers and technology firms are starting to align around use cases with genuine business value.
Preparing for what comes next
At CloudMargin, our role is to help clients meet today's demands while preparing for what comes next. This means continuing to invest in scalable, enterprise-grade collateral infrastructure which supports real-time risk management now, while ensuring clients are ready to take advantage of new forms of eligible collateral as the market evolves.
The future of collateral management won't be defined by volatility alone, and it won't be defined by tokenisation alone. It will be shaped by how well firms combine resilience, transparency and adaptability in a market demanding all three.
CloudMargin is committed to helping lead this next phase of industry innovation, combining our deep collateral expertise with modern infrastructure built for the realities of today's markets and the opportunities ahead.
