According to latest reports, Ping An Financial Services Group has joined the global blockchain consortium led by innovation firm R3, making it the first Chinese member of the consortium.

“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”, said Jessica Tan, COO at Ping An Group, as quoted by LeapRate.

The blockchain consortium, which consists of over 40 of the largest financial institutions including Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and UBS, successfully concluded its first distributed ledger bank membership round in December 2015. In March, it started accepting applications for new partners as part of a second round of engagements. SBI Holdings, Inc. was the first to sign on, followed by Hana Financial Group, one of the largest bank holding companies in Korea.

More recently, Itaú, a Brazil-based private sector bank, also announced that it has signed a partnership agreement with R3 for developing solutions from Blockchain-based distributed ledger technologies.

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

“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”, said David Rutter, CEO of R3.

R3 blockchain consortium has been frequently in news for its blockchain-based experiments. In January, it announced successful completion of the first blockchain experiment with 11 consortium member banks, followed by the successful trial of five distinct blockchain technologies in parallel in the first test of its kind. In April, R3 introduced Corda – a distributed ledger platform designed from the ground up to record, manage and synchronise financial agreements between regulated financial institutions.

China has recently shown interest in blockchain technology and last month announced the establishment of a distributed ledger based coalition agreement in Beijing, referred to as the ChinaLedger Union.