By
Temitope Olatunji
April 18th, 2024
JPMorgan filed a patent application that describes a distributed ledger-based version of floorplan financing to improve efficiency in the lending process.
American investment banking company JPMorgan seems to believe in a blockchain every day more and more. They revealed that through the blockchain they want to keep track of the automobile register it finances for car dealers – and stop them from guaranteeing the same cars for different loans.
The bank’s wholesale car financing subsidiary has therefore filed a patent application that outlines a distributed ledger-based version of floorplan lending, a revolving line of credit that enables car dealers to borrow against retail inventory.
Every car that is sold on the United States territory has something called an individual vehicle identity number (VIN). From JPMorgan, they thought VIN could be tied up to a blockchain together with a scale of different telematic and geolocation sensors. This could be used, the company thinks, instead of inefficient manual pain points around auditing inventory on the dealership floor.
Kevin Point, head of research and development at Chase Auto said:
“The floorplan lending process involves periodically doing a physical inspection or audit of all the inventory on the dealership’s lot. That means that a human being actually travels to the dealership, identifies the vehicles and then reconciles that inventory, if the loan’s outstanding, on both the dealer’s and the bank’s accounting system.”
Point added that approximately 17 million new cars are sold each year in the US and when you add the number of used vehicles you get many millions sitting on floorplan lines of credit. Tracking them on a distributed ledger “will achieve cost savings over time. We believe these could be significant on an industry-wide basis,” he said.
This definitely seems like a more practical approach for JPMorgan that will make its bottom line improved by the technology.
JPMorgan previously developed a Quorum blockchain, sort of private type of Ethereum and it was using it only for some theoretical financial operations, debt proceedings or connecting payment networks of equivalent banks.
Christine Moy, head of blockchain at JPMorgan, explained it as a pilot which has been tested with real dealership partners, but never in production. She added Network of Assets could be put in more widely, claiming that JPMorgan is in talks with carmakers about the blockchain system. However, she said she is not allowed to name specific companies.
She said:
“Not only is JPMorgan and Chase Auto seeking to solve its own problem, basically it will benefit the vehicular and equipment industry at large. The Network of Assets is the foundation for this particular application and use case, but can also be the foundational piece for many other value-added applications and services for auto manufacturers, other banks and finance companies, and dealerships, related to devices with telematics connectivity.”
DLT system allows more of the real-time risk management and is also made In order to prevent a custom known as “double flooring.”
Be it as it may, JPMorgan’s idea is nothing new in the car industry but its Quorum efforts are already confirmed having good tech clique, and it also gives the potential interoperability a tokenized payment systems as is the bank’s own cryptocurrency JPM Coin.