Thirteen more top banks join R3 blockchain consortium

By Jemima Kelly
LONDON, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Thirteen top banks, including
HSBC HSBC.L and Deutsche Bank DBKGn.DE , have joined a
consortium led by financial tech firm R3 that is working on a
framework for using blockchain technology in markets, a
spokesman for the firm said on Tuesday.
Nine other banks had already signed up to the initiative,
which represents the first time banks have collaborated on how
the technology that underpins bitcoin - a controversial,
web-based "cryptocurrency" - can be used in finance.
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The other banks announced on Tuesday were Citi C.N , Bank
of America BAC.N , Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) MS.N , Commerzbank
CBKG.DE , Societe Generale SOGN.PA , SEB SEBa.ST , BNY Mellon
BK.N , Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group 8306.T , National
Australia Bank NAB.AX , Royal Bank of Canada RY.TO and
Toronto-Dominion Bank TD.TO , taking the total to 22 banks.
The consortium is being led by David Rutter, who was
formerly CEO of electronic trading at ICAP (LONDON:IAP) Electronic Trading,
one of the world's largest interdealer brokers.
The blockchain works as a huge, decentralised ledger of
every bitcoin transaction ever made, which is verified and
shared by a global network of computers and therefore is
virtually tamper-proof. The Bank of England has a team dedicated
to it and calls it a "key technological innovation".
R3's Chief Technology Officer Richard Brown, who joined the
company last month from IBM (NYSE:IBM), told Reuters the technology could
bring banks significant savings by making their systems more
efficient and transparent, with less risk of error.
"Over decades banks and other firms have built systems for
themselves ... and then a collection of processes has emerged
between the banks ... to make sure these systems are kept
synchronised and are reconciled with each other," he said.
"With shared or distributed ledgers perhaps we can imagine a
world where participants share this infrastructure, so rather
than everyone running their own systems that have to be
reconciled, we can have ... an open platform that multiple firms
can connect to."
Brown also said that given that the likely use of this
ledger by banks would be for banking transactions, those would
need to be kept private - unlike the bitcoin transactions
currently recorded on the blockchain - because customers would
not want their details made public.
Deutsche Bank is half-way through testing out whether a
corporate bond can be issued on the blockchain and could
automatically issue coupons and redeem itself by means of a
"smart contract" that automatically executes the terms.
"For me it's the combination of tokenization and the smart
contract that I think is really revolutionary," said Rhom Ram,
who steers Deutsche Bank's digital agenda in transaction
banking.
"If you get into other asset classes that are dependent on
legal contracts, then typically they take a long time to settle.
That's a massive inefficiency."
Ram also said banks' interest in blockchain technology had
grown rapidly in recent months.
"We have been looking at all these developments for at least
18 months now, and for a long time I was talking to myself
within the banking community. But definitely within the last
five months there is a lot more understanding, interest and
momentum."