Irish Funds and Deloitte have completed their proof of concept for a platform using blockchain technology for regulatory reporting, RegChain.
Working in collaboration with other participants from asset servicing and fund management institutions, Irish Funds and Deloitte explored new reporting methods. Through RegChain, they measured the benefits of blockchain technology for improving transparency, and of managing reporting through smart contracts.
The project focused on resident investment fund returns under the Money Market and Investment Funds (MMIF) return reporting, creating a reporting platform designed to be accessible to both regulators and reporting entities.
It found blockchain to be a secure way of storing data, improving data quality and integrity, and that it can increase efficiency for regulatory reporting. It can also provide a safe network for data sharing, and help provide rich data for analytics, while also maintaining in-built disaster recovery capabilities.
Blockchain could also aid the general overall management of regulatory change requests, as changes can be coded once on a platform and shared across the whole network, meaning each individual solution is not implementing the same change.
Irish Funds and Deloitte noted that RegChain could be adapted for other regulatory reports. They advised that new solutions must take note of current industry requirements and should cater to the various needs of the operations world if they are going to succeed in the long term.
Irish Funds CEO Pat Lardner commented: “The successful completion of this project is an important first step in demonstrating the power of blockchain for regulatory reporting and industry collaboration around innovation. This foundation will enable additional development and progress to be made with other key stakeholders and confirms Ireland’s place a leading location for fintech globally.”
David Dalton, head of financial services at Deloitte Ireland and sponsor of Deloitte’s EMEA Grid Blockchain Hub, added: “Deloitte is delighted with the progress made by the collaboration with Irish Funds and funds industry participants. We look forward to seeing how we bring this to production and extend blockchain further into the funds industry.”
The institutions involved in the proof of concept project include Deutsche Bank, Metzler, Northern Trust and State Street.
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