Switzerland's two major banks and another key finance player to improve data quality ahead of new regulation. The project was born out of UBS' London-based fintech laboratory.
Massive Autonomous Distributed Reconciliation, or Madrec – the new initiative is set to bring data from Switzerland's and Europe's biggest banks into line ahead of the second varnish of MiFID, which comes into effect in January.
UBS said on Monday that it would cooperate with Credit Suisse, Britain's Barclays, Swiss exchange operator SIX, Belgium's KBC and data supplier Thomson Reuters on a joint initiative to improve the quality of counter-party reference data with industry counterparts, using Ethereum smart contracts.
The project was born out of UBS' London-based fintech hub, Level 39, where the Swiss bank has been working on various blockchain-based projects.
Blockchain Unites Rivals
The newest initiative is a common platform based on so-called smart contracts of blockchain firm Ethereum in Zug. Reference data used by banks is cryptographically concealed at each institution, but the Ethereum smart contracts reconciles the data against the consensus and provide each participant the ability to search and view their own specific data in real-time.
The point? To sniff out and resolve anomalies. This is necessary ahead of a European market directive coming into force next year – MiFID II. Blockchain has proven to be a unifying force among banks, with arch-rivals UBS and Credit Suisse working together on various initiatives based on the technology including R3CEV (as finews.com has previously reported here und here).
