Introduction
Georgia’s central bank has coordinated a shared-infrastructure agreement under which the country’s five largest commercial banks will jointly deploy Nasdaq’s Calypso treasury and capital markets platform. The National Bank of Georgia (NBG) is overseeing the initiative, which brings Bank of Georgia, TBC Bank, Liberty Bank, Terabank, and Basisbank onto a single centralized instance of the system rather than requiring each institution to procure and operate the platform independently.
The initiative matters because it represents a departure from how banking technology is typically deployed. Instead of each institution bearing the full capital and operational cost of enterprise-grade treasury infrastructure, the five participating banks — which collectively hold the majority of Georgia’s commercial banking sector assets, reported at approximately USD 38 billion following sustained double-digit growth over the past five years — will share a single system with segregated data per institution.
The program is relevant not only to Georgia’s banking sector but to central banks and regulators in other smaller markets evaluating whether shared infrastructure models can reduce the cost barriers associated with treasury system modernization and tightening regulatory reporting requirements.
What the Program Is
The deployment is coordinated under the Georgian Market Advancement Program (GMAP) in partnership with the Georgian Financial Markets Treasuries’ Association (GFMTA). It centers on Nasdaq’s Calypso platform, a treasury and capital markets technology system covering the complete front-to-back trade lifecycle: front-office deal capture and pricing, middle-office risk management and compliance, and back-office settlement, accounting, and financial reporting.
Rather than five separate implementations, the five banks will operate as distinct entities within a single, centrally hosted Calypso instance, with each institution’s data kept fully segregated. Project management funding for the initiative has been provided by Japan through the Japan-EBRD Cooperation Fund.
How the Shared Platform Works
The shared architecture is designed to deliver a standardized reporting layer across all five institutions, which the NBG states will improve its visibility into treasury exposures, liquidity positions, and systemic risk across the banking sector. A key component of this standardization is alignment with ISO 20022, the global financial messaging framework that is increasingly mandated for cross-border payment and securities settlement.
By consolidating five banks onto common data standards and a shared reporting infrastructure, the NBG functions as the coordinating authority — a role central to this deployment model, since a shared multi-institution instance requires a central body capable of managing data segregation, governance, and access across competing commercial entities.
Key Factors Influencing the Deployment
Several factors shaped the structure of this agreement:
- Cost distribution: According to industry context, smaller markets have increasingly found that the capital and operational burden of deploying enterprise-grade treasury systems individually is prohibitive, particularly as regulatory requirements for risk reporting and audit trails tighten.
- Multilateral funding: The program draws on cooperation funds from the EBRD, alongside project management funding from Japan, reducing the direct cost burden on individual banks or the central bank alone.
- Regulatory coordination: The NBG operates as an integrated financial supervisor covering commercial banks, payment service providers, and virtual asset service providers, positioning it to coordinate a sector-wide technology standard rather than leaving implementation to individual institutions.
- Vendor positioning: Nasdaq’s Calypso platform competes against vendors including Murex, Finastra, and ION Group, which offer comparable front-to-back treasury architectures. Nasdaq’s approach in this case is differentiated by its structuring of a shared, multi-institution instance rather than separate deployments.
Costs, Impact, and Implications
For the five participating banks, the shared model is intended to reduce the individual cost of implementing and maintaining enterprise treasury infrastructure, while still preserving data segregation between institutions. For the NBG, the standardized reporting layer is expected to provide improved sector-wide visibility into liquidity and systemic risk, information relevant to macroprudential oversight.
NBG Governor Natia Turnava said the initiative reflects the central bank’s commitment to building a financial market that is “robust, transparent, aligned with international best practice, and equipped to support Georgia’s continued economic growth.” Magnus Haglind, Nasdaq’s head of capital markets technology, described the shared model as intended to give participating firms access to institutional modernization expertise without each bearing the full cost, risk, or operational complexity independently.
Risks and Limitations
Shared infrastructure models carry structural risks distinct from single-institution deployments. Centralizing five major banks on one hosted instance concentrates operational risk: an outage, security incident, or implementation delay affecting the shared platform could have sector-wide consequences rather than being contained to a single institution. Data segregation between competing commercial banks operating on common infrastructure also requires robust governance to prevent unauthorized data access, a consideration made more sensitive given the amount of Georgia’s banking assets involved.
Additionally, the reliance on multilateral project funding through the Japan-EBRD Cooperation Fund means the program’s implementation timeline may be subject to funding and coordination dependencies beyond the direct control of the NBG or the participating banks.
Future Outlook
The NBG has indicated that, if implemented on schedule, GMAP should bring Georgia’s five largest banks onto harmonized reporting standards and unified audit infrastructure, reducing fragmentation that has historically complicated macroprudential oversight. Nasdaq has positioned the shared-instance model as a template applicable to other emerging markets facing similar capital constraints around treasury system modernization, though its broader replicability will depend on individual countries’ regulatory coordination capacity and access to comparable multilateral funding.
Conclusion
Georgia’s central bank-led deployment of Nasdaq’s Calypso platform across five major commercial banks represents a shared-infrastructure approach to treasury system modernization, funded in part through the Japan-EBRD Cooperation Fund. The model is designed to reduce individual implementation costs while improving sector-wide regulatory visibility through standardized, ISO 20022-aligned reporting. Its success will depend on execution timelines, data governance across competing institutions, and the operational risks inherent in a centralized shared system.
