Banking on Blockchain in Financial Services
Trillions of dollars are circulated through the global financial system serving billions of people and businesses every day. Financial Services organizations have embraced various technologies to help drive new business, reduce costs and ultimately become more competitive. Yet many of them still rely on paper-driven processes for various tasks.
Blockchain holds the potential for all individuals in a network to share a system of record, and can eliminate huge amounts of record-keeping, reducing costs, complexity and time.
Business Process Improvement
A Blockchain is a cryptographically secure, shared, data structure that is used to create a digital transaction ledger that, instead of resting with a single provider, is shared among a distributed network of computers. This results in more open and transparent systems that fundamentally change the way we think about exchanging value and assets, enforcing contracts and sharing data. Blockchain decentralizes data in a trustless environment, providing great benefits and changing fundamental processes and models:
- Eliminates Intermediaries – Allows industries to redefine or create new business models
- Reduces Fraud – Highly secure and transparent, making it nearly impossible to change historical records
- Increases Efficiency and Speed – Simplifies transactions and enables T +Zero settlement time
- Increases Revenue and Savings – Savings & revenue opportunities through efficient processes & reduced costs
Blockchain-enabled digital transformation
Some evangelists say the possibilities are limitless for the financial services sector, offering the opportunity to overhaul existing banking infrastructure, speed settlements and securely streamline stock exchanges. Applications can range from storing client identities to handling cross-border payments, clearing and settling bond or equity trades to smart contracts that are self-executing.
Blockchain will disrupt the financial services sector by redesigning costly legacy workflows, improve liquidity and free up capital. It also helps reduce infrastructure costs and improves execution and settlement times. Financial institutions are exploring many opportunities on how to use blockchain including:
- Applications to improve and enhance currency exchange
- Supply chain management
- Trade execution and settlement
- Remittance
- Peer-to-peer transfers
- Micropayments
- Asset regulation
- Correspondent banking
- Regulatory reporting
A Vision of Enterprise Blockchain
Microsoft’s blockchain vision and strategy focuses around accelerating blockchain deployment including:
- Azure Platform/On Premise/Hybrid– We can deploy blockchain in the cloud on Azure or hybrid versions, providing choice to deploy a consortium across multiple Azure regions, customer locations or other public cloud providers
- Rapid Deployment Infrastructure – Marketplace offerings allow you to deploy a working blockchain network with the ledger of your choice in minutes rather than weeks.
- Enterprise Integration Capability – Technologies like Enterprise Smart contracts and supporting technologies in Azure help integrate blockchain into your existing IT platforms, avoiding silos.
- Rapid Deployment of End to End solutions – Our accelerator builds end to end applications to prove value faster
Microsoft Services provides offers to help our customers have an improved understanding of blockchain. Take advantage and learn how to use the Blockchain Technology to simplify and transform your current processes and find the right set of Blockchain and cloud-related technologies to solve for your business challenges. Also, check out this Harvard Business Review article that discusses how Blockchain will energize the smart economy and advance business performance.
