[2016-05-31] Mint: ICICI Bank: Retaining its digital edge

ICICI Bank: Retaining its digital edge

http://www.livemint.com/Industry/VgJeA9DBV3itnXOwUIsuoO/ICICI-Bank-Retaining-its-digital-edge.html

Digital future

The bank is now focusing on using blockchain systems to make banking more robust for its customers. Blockchain, as Kochhar explained, acts as an open ledger and reduces the duplication of access to data or checking of data, which various parts of the ecosystem will need to do. The other benefits are scalability and lower cost.

“For example, it is not just limited to the banking part, if you look at trade or exports and imports. Can we start linking right from the point where exports are made and the export certificates are received and then against that the banks give a confirmation and another set of banks give funding? The ports give the confirmation of the physical goods having moved. Having that whole thing sit on an open ledger helps make things that much more transparent and therefore reduces fraud; it reduces mistakes of data entry and two banks giving different information,” Kochhar said.

She has a valid point. Blockchain holds the potential for all participants in a business network to share a system of record. This replicated, shared ledger will provide consensus, provenance, immutability and finality around the transfer of assets within business networks—reducing costs, complexity and time, underpinning shared, trusted processes, enabling trusted record-keeping and improving discoverability, according to a January Finextra whitepaper by International Business Machines Corp. (IBM).