Financial institution to move Corda Enterprise Blockchain on to Google Cloud.
HSBC has moved to software firm R3’s blockchain platform Corda Enterprise on to Google Cloud. The move will cut client onboarding times from months to weeks, improving the client experience and significantly reducing costs.
The bank currently uses R3’s Corda technology for Digital Vault, HSBC’s custody blockchain platform. Digital Vault is currently available in Asia and will be rolled out in other regions in due course.
HSBC is pursuing using blockchain to support the custody of future digital asset classes. Moving the Corda technology to Google Cloud gives the bank the option to move more of the transaction lifecycle on to the ledger in future, including issuing digital tokens instead of paper certificates.
The Digital Vault service, launched in November 2019, digitises the transaction records of private placement assets including equity, debt, and real estate.
This enables global custody clients to access details of their private assets directly and in real-time instead of having to request a search of paper-based records. As a result, they can easily keep track of when they will receive the coupon on a private debt transaction or facilitate an audit of transaction records.
R3’s Corda platform enables businesses to transact directly and privately using smart contracts, reducing transaction and record-keeping costs, and streamlining business operations, said Gaurav Aggarwal head of distributed ledger technology and tokenisation, markets and securities services at HSBC.
“As well as cutting onboarding times and reducing costs, it will help us prepare for the future, in which the full transaction lifecycle could be stored on a distributed ledger,” he said.
