Standard Chartered conducts client pilot for blockchain-based smart guarantees proposition in trade finance

Blockchain technologies make further strides in the finance industry, as Standard Chartered announces today a partnership with Siemens Financial Services, the financing arm of Siemens, and TradeIX, a digital trade provider, to carry out a client pilot to create an end-to-end blockchain-based smart guarantees proposition in trade finance.

The aim of the project is to transform the traditionally paper intensive Bank Guarantees business. The joint effort represents the first blockchain client pilot that fully digitizes the process, from initiation of the bank guarantee to the claim handling.

This solution will enable Siemens to digitize its guarantee process for customers with large transaction volumes in the future, spanning issuance, amendments and claims, eliminating the multiple touch-points and inefficiencies which are typical of the rather cumbersome process today.

Michael Bueker, Chief Financial Officer, Siemens LLC said: “This will streamline our processes and make our trade finance operations smoother, faster and more efficient. We are delighted to partner with Standard Chartered in leading such game-changing transformation which will help our customers go digital in their guarantee and claim processes and achieve higher efficiency.”

The pilot started in March 2018 and is set to be completed later this year. The proposition is based on auto-executing smart contracts, leveraging the Corda Distributed Ledger and application layer provided by TradeIX.

Just a couple of days ago, Samsung SDS announced the completion of the development of BankSign, its blockchain-based co-verification system for banks, for the Korea Federation of Banks. Until now, banking customers have had to go through the inconvenient process of renewing their digital certificate every year for each bank whose mobile banking they use. BankSign makes it easy for customers to access the banking services of multiple banks at once. The authentication process has also been improved with simplified passwords, fingerprint and pattern authentication.

In July this year, a group of major banks reported that blockchain platform we.trade had performed its first trades. The aim of we.trade is to create a common platform which enables companies, from SMEs to large corporates, to trade in a fast, easy and transparent way. The goal is to fully automate the trading process and seamlessly connect the entire trade ecosystem.