SWIFT, the global system that banks use to manage cross-border payments, is giving blockchain technology a new appraisal, five years after it took its first look.
This time around, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, is seeking to speed the transmission for data on corporate actions, events such as dividend payments, exchange offers and mergers that affect investors and money flows around the world. The current method involves data passing through an assortment of intermediaries before it reaches users such as asset managers, brokers and investment custodians, and the data can be contradictory or erroneous. End users must manually sort, compare and reconcile the data.
Blockchain might well be able to do it better. A hallmark of the technology is that blockchains are immutable ledgers, and a key advantage in this case is that they operate via consensus mechanisms that require agreement on the definition of each data item by a network of participants. In essence, this means a blockchain validates the data before registering it.
Leading financial institutions including CitigroupC -0.6%, Vanguard and Northern TrustNTRS +1.2% are participating in the trial.
“Innovation and emerging technologies, including blockchain and distributed ledger technology, are really interesting to us,” said Tom Zschach, chief innovation officer at SWIFT. “We're constantly looking for ways to validate the technology and to deliver the promise.”
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilymason/2022/09/16/blockchain-technology-could-make-swift-data-flow-faster/?sh=612624366083
This time around, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, is seeking to speed the transmission for data on corporate actions, events such as dividend payments, exchange offers and mergers that affect investors and money flows around the world. The current method involves data passing through an assortment of intermediaries before it reaches users such as asset managers, brokers and investment custodians, and the data can be contradictory or erroneous. End users must manually sort, compare and reconcile the data.
Blockchain might well be able to do it better. A hallmark of the technology is that blockchains are immutable ledgers, and a key advantage in this case is that they operate via consensus mechanisms that require agreement on the definition of each data item by a network of participants. In essence, this means a blockchain validates the data before registering it.
Leading financial institutions including CitigroupC -0.6%, Vanguard and Northern TrustNTRS +1.2% are participating in the trial.
“Innovation and emerging technologies, including blockchain and distributed ledger technology, are really interesting to us,” said Tom Zschach, chief innovation officer at SWIFT. “We're constantly looking for ways to validate the technology and to deliver the promise.”
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilymason/2022/09/16/blockchain-technology-could-make-swift-data-flow-faster/?sh=612624366083
