Typically, financial institutions wait for a new technology to mature before investing in it. Blockchain technology, because of the impact it is expected to bring to the financial industry, is a different matter, as witnessed by the number of financial institutions investing in blockchain experimentation.
Two Netherlands-based banks, Rabobank and ABN AMRO Bank N.V., are among the latest financial institutions to venture into blockchain-based solutions.
Blockchain investment totals close to $1 billion, noted Arjan van Os, head of Innovation Centre, and Marjan van der Plas, innovation manager at Innovation Centre, in a blog on ABN AMRO’s website. Innovation Centre is ABN AMRO’s “corporate garage” in which the bank experiments with innovative business models.
“The speed at which it is developing, and the potential solutions it can provide, has triggered financial institutions to get in on the ground floor and get involved in blockchain’s ‘coming of age,’” van Os and van der Plas blogged. Exploring Infrastructure ‘Fabric’
ABN AMRO is exploring the infrastructure “fabric” that will expand a distributed ledger and is developing applications to utilize its strengths. A distributed ledger could impact core bank processes.
ABN AMRO is examining where the technology will impact its operations. This could include cross-border payments, risk modeling and mortgages. By spreading its resources across various experiments, the bank is preparing for different scenarios.
More than 30 bank colleagues have volunteered to help explore blockchain possibilities, the blog noted. The bank associates involved span a wide range of departments. The teams are as diverse as blockchain technology itself. All members share the passion for exploration and discovery in the distributed ledger.
The teams, in varying compositions, work in a lean structure to prioritize and examine blockchain infrastructure aspects. The teams extract and review use case scenarios for six weeks in “design thinking workshops.” Should a scenario show potential, it […]
