SETL, the institutional payment and settlement infrastructure based on blockchain technology, has announced the addition of national security expert Martin Clements CMG OBE to its board.

Clements joins the startup from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office where he served as Director General responsible for Technology and Transformation. With a career revolving around national security issues and capabilities, he has served in the Middle East, South Asia and Europe. For the last decade, Martin was Senior Information Risk Owner, in charge of managing technical risk and other vulnerabilities to strategic information systems in the most testing of circumstances.

“In building a team which can credibly offer innovation in payments and settlements, it is important to establish a culture of diligence and awareness of cyber security from the start. Martin’s career in government has been about implementing that at the highest level. We are thrilled to have him on our board and believe that it further strengthens our ability to deliver innovative and robust blockchain solutions to the market”, Sir David Walker, Chairman of SETL and former Chairman of Barclays Bank, said.

Clements is a valuable addition to SETL as he brings in extensive experience in transforming of some of the UK's most sensitive technical systems and securing them against cyber and insider threats.

“We are in no doubt as to the importance of system resilience and cyber security in the payments and settlements world and the appointment of Martin is an indication that SETL will deal with these matters at board level. We are extremely pleased to welcome Martin to our board and expect to benefit from his very long and deep experience in security and the management of strategic information systems”, Peter Randall, SETL’s CEO, said.

Based in London, SETL was launched in July 2015 to deploy a multi-asset, multi-currency institutional payment and settlements infrastructure based on blockchain technology. The SETL system will enable market participants to move cash and assets directly between each other, facilitating the immediate and final settlement of market transactions.

Earlier in July, SETL announced the completion of its first round of private fundraising. More recently, the startup partnered with Cobalt DL, a private peer-to-peer network that reduces post-trade cost and risk for financial market participants through distributed ledger technology, to deploy the SETL OpenCSD within the Cobalt FX post trade platform.