The financial innovation company R3 and 10 of its blockchain consortium member banks have announced the successful development of a proof-of-concept (PoC) for a Know Your Customer (KYC) registry. This addresses the challenges that are linked with satisfying regulatory requirements and also allows identities to be managed by their owners themselves, IBTimes reported.

The move immediately follows R3’s announcement to launch its first dedicated distributed ledger technology (DLT) Center of Excellence in Singapore. The 10 banks include BBVA, CIBC, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, Natixis, Nordea, Northern Trust, Société Générale, UBS and US Bank. They have worked together in R3's Lab and Research Centre over a three-month period to build a shared KYC service proof-of-concept using blockchain technology.

"The growing complexity and cost of KYC compliance requirements presents a major challenge for banks on-boarding new clients and is having a negative impact on those client relationships. Distributed ledger technology can provide a unified view of clients whilst also significantly reducing costs and time spent verifying identity," David Rutter, CEO of R3 said, as reported by IBTimes.

The PoC enables establishing the identity of legal entity and an individual using KYC data and identity attestations by third-parties. The KYC service was created on R3's Corda platform and it enables participants to create and manage their own identities including relevant documentation. Customers can permission other participants to access this identity for client on-boarding and KYC purposes, later.

Six of the ten banks contributed code to the project. The solution has provided bank clients with a single interface for managing their global identity that simplifies the on-boarding process.