Banco de la República Colombia has formalised an agreement with enterprise software firm R3, which will allow it to experiment with and test the latest advances in distributed ledger technology (DLT).
Banco de la República Colombia, which is an entity of the Colombian State that performs the functions of central bank, with administrative, patrimonial and technical autonomy, became the first Latin American central bank to accept R3's invitation to evaluate the benefits of this technology.
In addition to the Bank of the Republic of Colombia, R3 already works with a number of central banks and regulators around the world.
These institutions collaborate with over 85 banks, financial institutions, trade associations, professional services firms and technology companies to develop commercial applications for the financial services industry that leverage the appropriate elements of DLT.
Members work closely with R3 to continue the development of Corda™, an open source distributed ledger platform for recording, managing and synchronising financial agreements. Corda is heavily inspired by and captures the benefits of blockchain systems, but with design choices that make it able to meet the needs of regulated financial institutions.
Fabio M. Pinzón, Technology Director at Banco de la República Colombia, commented: "The emergence of blockchain as a mechanism to have decentralised, secure and synchronised databases has promoted the emergence of platforms such as Corda from R3. It is in our interest to evaluate the benefits of this technology for the safe and efficient management of the exchange of securities in the Colombian financial system".
David Rutter, CEO of R3, comments: “Recognising that our members operate in one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world, since launching R3 we have made engagement with regulators and central banks a top priority. A collaborative public-private working model is crucial to speeding up the deployment of enterprise DLT platforms such as Corda. We look forward to working together with Banco de la República Colombia.”