Ping An Financial Services Group has become the first Chinese financial institution to join R3’s distributed ledger, or blockchain, consortium.
The consortium has created a partnership for designing commercial applications of distributed ledger technology and applying them and applying them to the global financial services industry.
It now includes more than 40 financial institutions, which work with technology and blockchain experts and industry figures to collaborate on research, experimentation and engineering.
The aim is to improve and develop the technology to meet the identity, privacy, security, scalability, interoperability and integration banking requirements, all in an experimental lab environment.
CEO of R3 David Rutter said: “The addition of Ping An is another important milestone for R3 as we develop our member network to represent the interests of banks and financial institutions operating in markets around the globe. We look forward to collaborating with them in our lab to develop the next generation in financial services technology.”
Jessica Tan, COO of the Ping An Group, commented: “Ping An Group has always been at the forefront of using technology and innovation in its banking, insurance, investment and internet businesses. We are excited about joining R3 and look forward to developing and using blockchain technology to create a more efficient way of managing financial assets digitally end-to-end.”
The addition to the R3 consortium is the latest success for the group in 2016. In April, R3 announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft to encourage faster adoption of blockchain technology in banking, while March saw the successful completion of trials for five cloud-based blockchain technologies.
In April, R3 also released its distributed ledger platform for financial services, Corda, which allows institutions to record, manage and synchronise financial agreements.
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