Legal Guidelines for Smart Derivatives Contracts: Equities

ISDA has published the fourth in a series of legal guidelines for smart derivatives contracts, intended to support technology developers, lawyers and other key stakeholders in the development of smart derivatives contracts in the equity derivatives market.

This paper:

  • Provides an overview of equity derivatives transactions and the different product types;
  • Explains how equity derivatives transactions are documented under both the 2002 and 2011 ISDA Equity Definitions; and
  • Explores how smart derivatives contracts might be constructed and delivered within the framework created by the 2011 ISDA Equity Definitions.

While the intention of this paper is not to specify or recommend any particular technological application or project, it does provide recommendations on steps that the industry should now take to further standardize and digitize equity derivatives documentation with a view to achieving greater automation of the equity derivatives market. This paper also provides information on how members can contribute to this work.

Click on the attached PDF to read the paper.

You can access all of ISDA’s papers on smart contracts here.

Documents (1) for Legal Guidelines for Smart Derivatives Contracts: Equities

CDM: User Journey from Concept to Production

The Common Domain Model (CDM) is a standardized, machine-readable and executable model for representing financial products, lifecycle events and contractual information. By providing an open source shared language across firms and platforms, it supports interoperability, automation, resource optimization and reduced...

ISDA DTF Tokyo SOM Opening Remarks

ISDA Derivatives Trading Forum Tokyo, October 23, 2026 Opening Remarks Scott O’Malia ISDA Chief Executive   Good afternoon, and welcome to the ISDA Tokyo Derivatives Trading Forum. Thanks for joining us today, and a big thank you to our sponsors,...

Response on Dividend Stripping

On October 14, ISDA, the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) and the International Securities Lending Association (ISLA) submitted a joint response to the Dutch Ministry of Finance on its proposed measures on dividend stripping. While supporting the policy...