Ping An becomes first Chinese institution to join R3 distributed ledger consortium

Ping An Financial Services Group has joined financial innovation firm R3’s partnership to design and apply distributed and shared ledger-inspired technologies to global financial markets.

The R3 team is made up of financial industry veterans, technologists, and new tech entrepreneurs, bringing together expertise from electronic financial markets, cryptography and digital currencies. R3 operates in New York, London and San Francisco and with its partners to define, design and deliver the next generation of financial technology.

Ping An is the 12th largest financial institution by market capitalization globally and the largest non-state-owned financial company in China with total assets exceeding USD $765 billion. Ping An Group’s diverse business portfolio spans insurance, banking, leasing, securities, trust, asset management and Internet Finance.

Ping An is known in the retail forex world as an investor in eToro.

Ping An, which is the first institution in China to join the consortium, will be collaborating with over 40 of the world’s largest financial institutions to develop ground-breaking commercial applications for the financial services industry that leverage the appropriate elements of distributed and shared ledger technology.

Recently Itaú Unibanco became the first Latin America bank to join R3.

The R3 team of financial industry veterans, technologists and blockchain and cryptocurrency experts collaborate with consortium members on research, experimentation, design and engineering to help advance this technology to meet banking requirements for identity, privacy, security, scalability, interoperability and integration with legacy systems.

R3 recently unveiled Corda, its shared ledger platform specifically designed to record, manage and synchronise financial agreements between regulated financial institutions. It is heavily inspired by and captures the benefits of blockchain systems, without the design choices that make blockchains inappropriate for many banking scenarios.

Jessica Tan, COO at Ping An Group, commented:

Ping An Group has always been at the forefront of using technology and innovation in its banking, insurance, investment and internet businesses. We are excited about joining R3 and look forward to developing and using blockchain technology to create a more efficient way of managing financial assets digitally end-to-end.

David Rutter, CEO of R3, commented:

The addition of Ping An is another important milestone for R3 as we develop our member network to represent the interests of banks and financial institutions operating in markets around the globe. We look forward to collaborating with them in our lab to develop the next generation in financial services technology.

Ping An joins the global network of R3 partners united in its lab environment, the R3 Lab and Research Centre, which has quickly become a center of gravity for collaborative research and testing of distributed and shared-ledger inspired technologies.

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