SETL is a UK-based financial technology company that builds institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure for payment and settlement systems. Founded in 2015 by Sir David Walker (former chairman of Barclays) and Anthony Sherley (former MD at Credit Suisse), SETL developed a permissioned distributed ledger designed to handle the high throughput demands of regulated financial markets.

The SETL platform enables market participants to move cash and assets directly between each other, supporting immediate and final settlement of transactions. The system maintains a permissioned ledger of ownership and transaction records, streamlining the traditionally complex post-trade process of matching, settlement, custody, registration, and regulatory reporting. SETL's architecture has been demonstrated processing over 1 billion transactions per day in testing environments.

SETL's most notable deployment was its involvement with IZNES, a European fund record-keeping platform built on SETL technology that went live for asset management order processing. The company has also worked with central banks and financial market infrastructure providers exploring central bank digital currency (CBDC) and tokenized asset settlement. SETL has navigated a challenging business environment, entering administration in 2023 before its technology and operations were restructured under new ownership.

Key Facts

• Founded: 2015
• Headquarters: London, United Kingdom
• Focus: Institutional payment and securities settlement via distributed ledger
• Notable deployment: IZNES fund record-keeping platform

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