BNP Paribas has joined forces with Tata Consultancy Services in a bid to transform the tortuous corporate events lifecyle through the use of blockchain technology.
Corporate actions processing is one of the most complex areas of asset servicing. Information on the multitude of corporate actions taking place every year is processed and cascaded down to investors via various intermediaries, leading to inefficiencies and errors.
BNP Paribas Securities Services is looking to drag the practice into the 21st century by using TCS Quartz, a blockchain-based service embedded in the vendor's core banking platform TCS Bancs, to capture and store corporate action information on a permissioned ledger.
Asset servicing information, such as merger and acquisition announcements and dividend payments, will be collected through TCS BaNCS for Corporate Actions from more than 90 markets, including 27 local official sources in BNP Paribas’ proprietary network.
Philippe Ruault, head of digital transformation at BNP Paribas Securities Services, says: “Managing and disseminating corporate event information in an accurate and timely fashion has long been a pain point for the custody industry and we are delighted to be working with TCS on this project. Blockchain is proving to be an extremely useful technology for us, and it is particularly exciting to build a digital ecosystem in cooperation with our clients and partner providers to deliver such a key service.”
The platform, dubbed Corporate Event Connect, is currently in beta version and will be subject to a phased roll out, he adds.