Global banking giant HSBC will explore the use of blockchain for the issuance of fixed income securities in a joint trial with Singapore Exchange (SGX) and investment firm Temasek. Focused on the Asia bond markets, the trial intends to streamline the bond issuance process and reduce associated costs by applying tokenized securities and smart contracts, HSBC Singapore announced Nov. 13. While Asia’s fixed income markets continue to grow, bond issuance and servicing processes remain inefficient, according to HSBC. This is purportedly due to the absence of a single platform for the exchange of information between multiple parties and tracking tools …

Global banking giant HSBC has tested out its blockchain-based trade finance platform Voltron and reduced transaction time by 40%, the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply reported on July 10. To arrange a shipment between Hong Kong and Dubai, HSBC partnered with major retail organization Landmark Group which provided its blockchain platform ReChainMe. The companies linked up their respective platforms, which reportedly resulted in the reduction of transaction time by 12 days, or 40%. Sunil Veetil, regional head of trade at HSBC MENA and Turkey, said that blockchain-based platforms will provide businesses a competitive advantage by increasing trade speeds. HSBC …

United Kingdom-based banking giant HSBC is seeking banking partners in South Korea to deploy the blockchain platform Voltron in the country, Korean news outlet The Korea Times reports on Tuesday, March 12. As reported, Voltron is a platform that enables companies to process and settle their trading invoices via blockchain. The solution was launched in October 2018 by blockchain consortium R3 and eight banks — including HSBC, ING and Standard Chartered — and is currently at the pilot stage. HSBC's Innovation Director on Blockchain Joshua Kroeker, cited by The Korea Times, says that the company is planning to launch Voltron …

Global financial messaging network, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), is carrying out a blockchain-based shareholder e-voting proof-of-concept (PoC) with major financial institutions. SWIFT announced the news in a press release published on March 6. Per the press release, the PoC will be jointly conducted in the Asia Pacific region with Deutsche Bank, DBS, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, securities software provider SLI and the Singapore Exchange (SGX). The test is meant to establish whether distributed ledger technology (DLT) can simplify the management of shareholder meetings. More precisely, the test, which is set to run during the first half …

London-based banking giant HSBC has revealed its blockchain-powered platform cut costs for foreign exchange (forex) trade settlement by a quarter, Reuters reported on Feb. 14. According to Mark Williamson — chief operating officer of forex cash trading and risk management at HSBC — the bank processes anywhere between 3,500 and 5,000 trades a day using its proprietary blockchain solution “FX Everywhere.” These trades, worth $350 billion, demonstrate “[w]e’re going at a pace now [...] this is not a one-off proof of concept or just one or two trades.” Williamson notably did not disclose the overall volume or value of forex …

Frenchman Hervé Falciani, a whistleblower who has been convicted of the largest leak in banking history, plans to launch an ethical cryptocurrency that would combat money-laundering and fraud, Reuters reported on Feb. 8. In 2015, Falciani was convicted in absentia by Swiss courts for aggravated financial espionage after leaking the details of ~30,000 accounts, holding almost $120 billion in assets at HSBC’s Swiss private bank. The evidence — which was alleged to have exposed a web of clients’ tax evasion, money laundering, and illicit financing schemes — has since triggered investigations and prosecutions in several countries, and Falciani remains in …

Blockchain payments network Ripple announced it had hired a former HSBC general counsel to oversee its legal services and compliance, in a press release Jan. 30. Ripple, which has not had a general counsel of its own since September last year, will draw on Stuart Alderoty’s expertise as it navigates the legal territory associated with its operations, including those involving associated cryptocurrency XRP. The appointment comes at a crucial time for Ripple, which is facing a consolidated consumer lawsuit over XRP’s performance. “As we continue to work with financial institutions and regulators across the globe to drive home the importance …

International banking giant HSBC settled $250 billion of forex trades using blockchain technology in 2018. The company has revealed the figure in a press release quoted by the Financial Times (FT) Jan. 14. Through its proprietary blockchain platform dubbed “FX Everywhere,” HSBC handled 3 million transactions, which translated into 150,000 payments since it launched in February. The technology allows HSBC to “conduct thousands of foreign exchange transactions within the bank, across multiple balance sheets, in dozens of countries,” FT quoted Richard Bibbey, acting global head of currencies as saying. “FX Everywhere uses distributed ledger technology to drastically increase the efficiency …

Scathing reports by regulators have accused traditional banks of inadvertently helping “drug kingpins and rogue nations” – enabling them to commit money laundering, make questionable transfers and evade economic sanctions and taxes. It is a problem that dates back decades. Indeed, an article in The New York Times from 1989 estimated that $100 billion in revenues from cocaine sales in the US alone were ending up in the hands of a violent drug cartel in Colombia. The advent of electronic wire transfers was to blame, with one politician warning: “The bankers are unconsciously and haphazardly and lazily acting in complicity …

The Indian subsidiary of major global banking and financial services firm HSBC and India’s holding giant Reliance Industries (RIL) have completed a blockchain-enabled trade finance transaction, Indian business newspaper The Hindu Business Line reports Sunday, Nov. 4. The blockchain-powered letter of credit (LoC) transaction, reportedly the first of its kind in India, involved export by RIL to U.S. client Tricon Energy, which sufficiently reduced both the time and costs of processing documentation. The new system represents a significant improvement in global export market interactions by bringing all parties together on one platform, The Hindu Business Line notes. According to the …

A new blockchain trade finance platform developed by a dozen banks, among them HSBC, BNP Paribas, and Standard Chartered, launched this week in Hong Kong, Reuters reported Oct. 31. The platform, dubbed eTrade Connect, aims to improve efficiency in the financing of international trade by reducing the time needed to approve trade loan applications from thirty-six to just four hours. HSBC is reported to have earned $2.52 billion in trade-finance revenue in 2017, making it one of the global banking leaders in the industry. As of 2017, trade finance transactions were worth over $9 trillion, and the industry remains heavily …

A senior executive from U.K.-based bank HSBC has said that time-efficient distributed ledger technologies (DLT) and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) represent a “great challenge” to existing real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems, Cointelegraph learned at the Money20/20 conference Oct. 23. HSBC’s Global Innovation Lead for Global Liquidity & Cash Management, Craig Ramsey, made his remarks during a panel during the Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas yesterday, which was devoted to “Digital Opportunities for Cross-Border Inter-Bank Transactions.” When asked by moderator Robert Ruark — principal at financial services at “big four” audit firm KPMG — about which technologies HSBC is currently …