ABN Amro, the Dutch state-owned bank serving serves retail, private and corporate banking clients, has announced that it has formed a 30-strong team explore potential blockchain applications.

“ABN AMRO is one of the banks that is investing time, energy and resources into as many facets of the Blockchain phenomenon as possible”, said Arjan van Os, Head of the bank’s Innovation Centre.

The bank is focusing on studying the infrastructure ‘fabric’ that will build the blockchain and developing the applications that could utilise its strengths. In particular, the bank is interested in assessing the impact the technology could have on its core bank processes.

“ABN Amro is looking throughout its businesses where the new technology might have an impact. From mortgages to risk modelling to cross-border payments. We don’t know where this exploration will end up, and there are still many uncertainties. By spreading our resources across a vast range of experiments, we are preparing for any number of possible scenarios. One might say that we’re hedging our bets”, said Arjan van Os and Marjan van der Plas, Innovation Manager at the bank’s Innovation Centre, in an online post.

ABN Amro is joining blockchain start-ups and open collaboration initiatives. It has committed to Linux Hyperledger and Digital Asset Holding to help explore the potential of a single, open-source platform for blockchain applications.

They said that over 30 colleagues across the bank volunteered to help explore the possibilities of blockchain. The teams are as diverse and work in a lean start-up inspired framework, in various compositions, to examine and prioritise different aspects of the blockchain infrastructure, or different ways in which it might be applied.

Pointing out the various potential use cases of the technology, the bloggers said that one initiative that might hold the key to a future blockchain development could by its “mortgage experiment”.

“We’re developing ‘What if’ scenarios and Proofs of Concept to explore how blockchain could eliminate uncertainties surrounding the estimation of collateral values”, they said.

In addition, the bank is also interested in exploring blockchain potential in the Financial Audit and Compliance Ledger, in the area of Financial Recovery and Restructuring (FR&R). Together with IBM, it is exploring whether blockchain could help create data uniformity in the FR&R chain, based on a single shared ledger. IBM and ABN Amro will equally share the blockchain knowledge gathered in the project.

ABN Amro has partnered with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to explore blockchain’s potential in Clearing and Settlement. The experiment aims to establish a distributed ledger that can be integrated with legacy systems to create a ‘single source of truth’ and allow instant payments in cash settlements.

“This small selection of experiments merely scratches the surface. Our year of discovery and experimentation is taking us places we’ve never been before. The uncertainty surrounding blockchain isn’t a roadblock. On the contrary, it is an exciting and uplifting opportunity”, they said.