We’re very excited to welcome industry-trailblazer Ian Sloyan to our product team. Ian is a true pioneer, having led the creation of the Common Domain Model at ISDA for many years. By joining Tokenovate as one of our CDM-leads he now steps over to the implementation side, and he is excited!
We caught up with Ian on his first day at his new job:
Welcome onboard, Ian. Tell us a little bit about yourself!
I am from Dublin, Ireland. I studied engineering at Trinity College Dublin, which led me to King’s College London to pursue further studies in engineering 21 years ago. Somehow (perhaps poverty and the wealth of opportunities in the City) I ended up moving into finance and working at a number of investment banks in various roles across operations, front office, and technology – in various asset classes but nearly always focussed on derivatives markets.
Let’s take a quick aside from the dull career resumé: when I was in school, on my bedroom wall was a sheet of paper where I had scribbled down a number of quotes that I had collected (before Google!) for some English assignments. One quote always stuck with me, from Garry Trudeau, the American cartoonist best known for creating the Doonesbury comic strip: “I’ve been trying for some time to develop a lifestyle that doesn’t require my presence.”
Now, like any brief quote, the meaning is up for debate, but I think about it regularly, whether confronting unwieldy processes in financial markets or battling tedious life admin, I find myself asking: Why is this done this way? Do we really need so many steps? Can I automate myself out of this job? (How long can I stay on with customer service providing “constructive feedback”?)
Indeed in my first job at UBS, I quickly found myself analysing every step in our team’s processes, eager to streamline and automate where possible—even if it meant making my role redundant!
Back to the career resumé, around 2012, while juggling work commitments, I completed a part-time MSc in Mathematical Trading and Finance at Bayes Business School. The aftermath of the financial crisis saw the industry deeply immersed in implementing new regulations – think Dodd-Frank in the US from 2009 onwards – and I was no exception, spending several years on regulatory projects. That experience led me to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), where regulatory acronyms like EMIR and MiFIR quickly became part of daily vocabulary. There, I helped ISDA members navigate the evolving regulatory landscape and worked with European regulators to understand how these new rules would impact derivatives markets.
By 2016, conversations were starting to shift. Within ISDA’s working groups, there was a growing sense that things could, and should, be done better. That’s when the concept of the “Common Domain Model” (CDM) emerged. With my blend of hands-on experience and academic background, I found myself in a position to help lead this project. I’m genuinely grateful to ISDA for entrusting me with that responsibility. The journey since has been nothing short of exciting: working alongside exceptionally talented people to shape a new industry standard, shepherding CDM from early brainstorming sessions among a handful of firms all the way to its open-source release at FINOS. I’ve been fortunate to remain involved, supporting the vibrant CDM community as it continues to drive adoption and innovation.
Today, as the industry evolves with new technologies like DLT and tokenised assets, CDM will provide the foundation for greater automation and transparency. Through it all, the thread remains the same: I am driven by a need to understand complexity and to automate everything I can. My enduring goal is simple— make things smarter, quicker, and less reliant on human drudgery. As Trudeau (may have) implied, the less required my presence is, the better the system is working!
Outside of work, I enjoy music and I am an avid record collector – the thousands of records on my shelves come from many genres but with a definite bias towards technology: electronic music, instrumental beats, and techno being in the majority – though jazz and reggae do feature too. Being born in Dublin I am lucky enough to be a fan of Dublin GAA – though our hurlers and footballers have had a mixed year in 2025. I also support Liverpool FC which in recent years has been a lot easier than it was in past decades!
What was it that tempted you to join Tokenovate?
Well for starters, Tokenovate has embraced CDM wholeheartedly as a way to deliver the automated workflows the market needs. Tokenovate’s series of publications and events around operationalising CDM attest to that.
What really excites me is how closely Tokenovate’s philosophy aligns with my own: a drive to simplify, automate, and improve the way things are done. Having recently worked side-by-side with the Tokenovate team on several projects, I’ve been deeply impressed — not just by the visionary approach and strategic clarity of the leadership, but by how that direction is understood and executed across every level of the company.
Reflecting on my long-standing goal to automate processes and eliminate inefficiency, I can confidently say that Tokenovate offers the ideal environment for me to realise this ambition within the industry I’ve devoted the past 20 years to.
How do you see CDM being used in the market in the next 2-3 years?
Much of the recent focus for CDM adoption has centered on regulatory reporting — and for good reason. Although requirements may differ regionally, regulatory reporting is fundamentally an area where mutualisation makes sense: everyone benefits from doing it the same way. The logic is clear: take trade data, structure it into a standard format, and deliver it to regulators. The successes here, such as through ISDA’s DRR project, have been well publicised and now serve as building blocks for broader adoption.
But it’s important not to lose sight of CDM’s wider vision. The model was designed from the outset not just to streamline regulatory workflows, but also to enable automation across the entire trade lifecycle and accelerate the adoption of new technologies, DLT being a notable example now gaining real momentum in markets.
Looking ahead, these foundational goals are coming back into focus within the CDM community. Tokenisation and collateral management stand out as near-term application areas: combining CDM with DLT networks is poised to revolutionise how collateral and trading are managed and settled.
Of course, no standard operates in a vacuum. One of CDM’s biggest strengths — and a personal conviction of mine — is its collaborative approach. CDM is designed to work alongside, and integrate with, other standards and technology projects, not to replace them. Whether it’s financial messaging standards, DLT platforms, or other business frameworks, CDM acts as an enabler, providing a common language and set of definitions that can bridge different technologies and business processes. Its ambition is balanced by a grounded, integrative perspective that helps unify the ecosystem rather than fragment it.
AI will also play a growing role. The headlines may suggest a future dominated by large language models, but the real breakthrough comes when AI is built on well-structured data and clear business definitions. CDM supports this by giving AI tools the clarity and consistency they need to effectively analyse, streamline, and reimagine trading and operational processes.
A final area where I see immediate traction is the digitisation of legacy documentation, converting old contracts into machine-readable, standardised forms for use on new CDM networks. We’ve moved beyond proof of concept here, and the next step is to scale these solutions across the industry.
In short, while its initial impact has been most visible in regulatory reporting, CDM’s future is collaborative and enabling, working with other standards and projects to power tokenised assets, DLT adoption, AI-driven efficiencies, and the industry-wide move toward digitisation. The next 2–3 years will be about turning this vision into actionable progress, with CDM at the centre as a practical and unifying standard for modern finance.
You can connect with Ian on LinkedIn.