Dublin ‘well placed’ for blockchain growth

Dublin is well placed to capitalise on the most recent major technology primed to transform the financial services industry.

Santander InnoVentures, the Spanish bank’s fintech venture capital fund, last year estimated blockchain technology could save banks up to $20bn (€17.86bn) a year.

Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology which allows multiple users to manipulate data in a secure way without the need for a central authority, or middle man, to approve the changes.

In financial services, for example, trades are often verified by central clearinghouses which typically take a fee and can take days to process the transactions.

Cutting out those time and cost constraints could yield significant benefits for financial services companies and, by extension, cities with strong financial sectors, according to PwC Europe, Middle East and Asia blockchain leader Steve Webb.

Dublin’s International IFSC is among the global hubs well-positioned to capitalise on this latest disruptive technology, he said.

“Dublin obviously has a very successful role to play in the finance community and if you look at the potential benefits for fund management and actually the service providers that service funds, there’s any number of potential business use cases.

“There’s the whole clearing and settlement use case and the transfer agency, for example.

“For places like Dublin, one of the first things to think about is where have you already got a beneficial community; a community which has a unique benefit and is to an extent a global centre and what some of the activities that could be explored?

“For Dublin, I would have said funds is definitely an area to look at because some of the other centres like Luxembourg will also be looking,” Mr Webb said.