Bank ABC joins global consortium
MANAMA: Bahrain-based Bank ABC, a leading international banking group, has joined blockchain-inspired consortium headed by R3, a financial innovation firm, headquartered in New York City.
The over 80-strong consortium of the world’s biggest financial institutions is spearheading research and development of blockchain-inspired distributed ledger technologies (DLT) to build the next generation of financial services infrastructure.
DLT enables participating parties to form and maintain consensus about the existence, status and evolution of a set of shared facts on their stakeholders.
These systems allow competing firms to collaborate to maintain secure, shared databases and reduce cost and execution time.
“We are privileged to be part of this prestigious consortium of international banks and financial institutions, which is spearheading a pivotal change in the industry,” said Bank ABC Group deputy chief executive Sael Al Waary.
“DLT and blockchain technology has added a new dimension to the evolving FinTech landscape and we are confident that this alliance will propel us further to achieve our strategic goals.
“We are committed to continue to provide our customers with exceptional customer service and innovative financial products. DLT will help us fulfil our promise to clients.”
Bank ABC Group head of information technology Stuart Rennie said, “access to the wealth of knowledge and resources available through the R3 consortium” will strengthen the bank “to leverage our investment in technology and support the delivery of our digital strategy”.
According to R3 chief executive David Rutter, substantial progress had already been made in the development of DLT, with the launch of Corda – its open source distributed ledger platform – and numerous successful proof-of-concepts.
“The addition of Bank ABC marks a significant milestone for R3, becoming our first partner in the Middle East as we continue to expand our global network. We look forward to working with them and extending the benefits of distributed ledger technology even further,” he added.
Bank ABC provides innovative wholesale financial products and services that include corporate banking, financial and capital markets, trade finance, project and structured finance, syndications, treasury products and Islamic banking.
It also provides retail banking services through its network of retail banks in Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria.
Source: http://www.gdnonline.com/Details/249543/Bank-ABC-joins-global-consortium
