Blockchain Platform for Trade Finance - ANZ
(31 July 2018 - Hong Kong) ANZ has announced the development of a trade finance platform in partnership with several Asian banks including Bank of China, Bank of East Asia, DBS Bank, Hang Seng Bank and HSBC under the guidance of the territory’s central bank, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA).
The Melbourne headquartered bank has identified its reliance on traditionally paper heavy manual documentation processes as an area that lacks efficiency. A major effort is being made to utilise blockchain technology to drive transaction towards a simpler, more efficient and more cost-effective process. The platform is “not a technological experiment like many other proof-of-concepts (POC),” but instead is looking to utilise blockchain technology directly to support the costly and time consuming trade finance process. The platform is currently undergoing user acceptance tests and is expected to launch in September 2018.
The announcement matches investment and research carried out by the bank’s New Zealand operation, seeking to to remove the massive amounts of manual data handling with a view that blockchain technology could go a long way in streamlining the way data is handled across the board and has many advantages that current platforms lack. Driving cost savings is a key advantage cited by the group. A lot of trade finance processes are currently manual and data-driven, and a distributed ledger blockchain platform puts all the data into one place, so the cost reduction is immense.
ANZ Greater China and North Asia Head of Trade and Supply Chain, Vivek Gupta stated that the trade finance platform exceeds the scale of anything similar implemented before. “The platform will facilitate domestic and cross-border trade out of Hong Kong, and what makes this project different is that it is no longer a proof-of-concept – it is fully realised and going into production. We are also engaging very well with the regulator, which puts us in a really strong position if and when we want to scale up. We will be undertaking live testing transactions fairly soon. ANZ is the only Australian Bank as a founding member of the platform and we are in active discussions with our clients with trade flows between our home markets of Australia and New Zealand and Hong Kong/Greater China to bring them on the platform. Speed is also an important factor, and this is primarily important from a customer point of view. The technology is completely secure, and there is an end-to-end record of each transaction which is extremely useful. Anyone from a bank, to a law enforcement agency, to a regulator will be able to access that record, so the possibilities are really endless.”
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