Ping An Financial Services Group (SHA:601318) has joined the Blockchain consortium led by R3 last week. It is the first institution in China to join the collaboration of over 40 global major banks and institutions to design new distributed and shared ledger-inspired technologies for the financial markets, including a managed private peer-to-peer distributed ledger, underpinned by Ethereum technology and hosted on a virtual private network in Microsoft Azure.
Jessica Tan, COO at Ping An Group, commented: “Ping An Group has always been at the forefront of using technology and innovation in its banking, insurance, investment and internet businesses. We are excited about joining R3 and look forward to developing and using blockchain technology to create a more efficient way of managing financial assets digitally end-to-end.”
David Rutter, CEO, R3
David Rutter, CEO of R3, added: “The addition of Ping An is another important milestone for R3 as we develop our member network to represent the interests of banks and financial institutions operating in markets around the globe. We look forward to collaborating with them in our lab to develop the next generation in financial services technology.”
R3 recently unveiled a shared ledger platform specifically designed to record, manage and synchronise financial agreements between regulated financial institutions. It is said to be “heavily inspired by blockchain systems, without the design choices that make blockchains inappropriate for many banking scenarios.”
Back in March the Japanese internet conglomerate SBI Holdings, Inc. (TYO:8473) announced that it was the latest firm to join the blockchain consortium led by R3 CEV LLC.
