Financial innovation firm R3 is continuing to add more organizations to its blockchain consortium that has more than 60 of the world’s largest financial institutions focusing on developing ground-breaking commercial applications based on distributed ledger technologies (DLTs).

Brazil-based BM&FBOVESPA has become the first exchange to join the consortium. The biggest Latin American financial exchange operator will be collaborating with other member institutions to develop distributed and shared ledger-inspired technologies for global financial markets.

“BM&FBOVESPA is researching blockchain-based solutions from a business and IT perspective, and we are pleased to join R3 in the drive to innovate in capital markets”, Jochen Mielke de Lima, IT Managing Director at BM&FBOVESPA, said. “Distributed ledgers hold a promise for process efficiencies and we want to work with our customers to evaluate real use cases.”

This initiative is part of the company’s strategy of supporting transformative projects that focus on trading infrastructure enhancements, always seeking new alternatives that meet clients’ needs.

“We believe that strong collaboration with our customers, regulators and vendors is crucial to futureproof financial and capital markets. Innovation with appropriate regulatory oversight is paramount to making the Brazilian markets even more efficient and reliable. Shared ledger technology may play an important role here”, Fabio Dutra, Client and Business Development Managing Director at BM&FBOVESPA, said.

BM&FBOVESPA 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.

“Distributed and shared ledger technology can transform the way in which FMIs (Financial Market Infrastructures) such as BM&FBOVESPA issue, record and transfer assets, enabling transactions and reference data to be visible to all relevant parties on the ledger. This can cut effort and costs dramatically. We are pleased to welcome BM&FBOVESPA to our growing network of consortium members in Brazil”, David Rutter, CEO of R3, said.