By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 12th, 2024
Now, the AIA Group will join a group of world’s leading financial organizations collaborating on the development of blockchain-based applications.
R3 consortium, a group of companies under the command of New York-based blockchain startup R3, welcomes a new member. R3 keeps engaging Asian financial institutions and this time it added Hong Kong-based life insurance group AIA.
Simeon Preston, AIA’s Group Chief Operations Officer, underlined the importance of the collaboration launched by R3: “AIA is excited to join R3 as the first pan-Asian life insurer, as distributed ledger technology or blockchain offers significant opportunities to the life and health insurance industry.
“R3 provides us the possibility to understand together with other leading global organisations in financial services the potential applications of blockchain technology around the world and particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. We look forward to taking a leadership role in exploring how this technology might result in increased efficiency and improved service for our customers,” he added.
The AIA Group is the largest independent publicly listed pan-Asian life insurance group covering 18 markets across the Asia-Pacific region. It aims at provision of excellent services for its customers and shareholders and staying the pre-eminent life insurance provider in the Asia-Pacific region. The company plays an important role in driving economic and social development across the region
Now, the AIA Group, as a part of R3 consortium, will collaborate with world’s largest and most significant financial institutions to create commercial applications on the basis of the blockchain technology for the financial services industry.
R3 CEO David Rutter said about the consortium: “By collaborating with a broad range of non-bank institutions in addition to our extensive banking partners, we will ensure the technology being developed in our lab represents the different interests and requirements of the vast array of players in the global financial ecosystem.”
R3 offered its R3 Lab and Research Centre for international members to “unite in one lab environment”. The Center is that very place where smart contract blockchain Corda was developed by Barclays and its partners – University College London’s Centre for Blockchain Technologies, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, the banking services company Société Générale and Techstars.
Some time ago, R3 CEV unveiled exciting news at the Blockchain & Distributed Ledger Conference that took place in New York on April 13-14. Remarkably, it was the first conference of that kind although the attention of multiple financial institutions has been recently focused on bitcoin and blockchain.
During the speech, the representative of R3 blockchain consortium stated that the consortium is developing now eight different proofs-of-concept aimed at usage of distributed ledgers for facilitation and regulation of financial transactions. The list of spheres where R3CEV is planning to leverage the ledgers includes system interoperability, payments, settlement, trade finance, corporate bonds, repos, swaps, and insurance.
This is one more step forward the achievement of the primary goal and, in general, reason why R3 CEV was created – the adoption of the blockchain technology in an attempt to broaden its use in the financial services sector.