Overview

Blockchain technology is currently one of the most exciting technological developments in the BFSI industry and is rapidly gaining traction due to a rich ecosystem of startups, technology majors, and investments by leading financial services enterprises. Though cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have received mixed response from the financial services industry, the underlying distributed ledger technology, Blockchain, received a lot of positive buzz in 2015. In the past 18 months, no industry conference or trends forecast in the BFSI sector was complete without the mention of Blockchain technology and its potential benefits to revolutionize the BFSI industry. If it lives up to the hype, the Blockchain has the potential to deliver significant transaction cost savings – the ability to make secure, efficient, and near real-time settlements. Further, the decentralized nature of the ledger backed by multiple miners make transactions immutable. The technology has potential to increase transparency for regulatory reporting, minimize counterparty risk, and improve contractual term performance. Use cases of this technology include inter-bank transactions, foreign exchange trading, maintaining digital records & transferring ownership of assets, and near real time securities settlement, among others.

There is no doubt that the technology has a lot of potential, but currently it also faces a lot of uncertainty and challenges. There are several different versions of the shared ledger technology and since this technology is rapidly evolving so will these different versions. The future of these different Blockchains is uncertain, and the final shape these will take and whether these will work or not.

With our latest report, “Blockchain in BFSI – Looking Beyond the Hype” we attempt to remove the hype from all the facts and tell the story of key investments that have happened till date and how has the Blockchain technology evolved. We also provide our point of view on how the technology will evolve, what will be the key trends in the next 12 to 18 months, and what would be the key implications on enterprises and service providers.

In this report, we attempt to cut through all the hype surrounding the technology and present a fact-based assessment of the state of the market, detailing investments made by participants such as financial services companies, technology companies, and FinTech startups. The content of this report is the result of a comprehensive study featuring online sources and literary works, as well as our interactions with service providers and enterprises. The aim is to identify the opportunities, challenges, and key success factors for BFSI enterprises looking to leverage the Blockchain technology and the implications for service providers. The research also captures evolving trends, market dynamics, and emerging priorities of enterprises in the last 12-18 months.

In this research, we analyze the current trends and the future outlook of Blockchain technology on the global BFSI sector. We focus on:

• Market trends and activity for Blockchain technology
• Priorities of BFSI enterprises and key investment themes
• Service providers’ play in the Blockchain ecosystem
• Role of FinTech startups in the Blockchain ecosystem
• Future outlook and how enterprises can drive faster adoption of the technology

Note: In this report we use “Blockchain” to refer to any form of distributed ledger technology that can store encrypted transactions and maintain trust through any form of consensus mechanisms. Whenever we need to refer to the Blockchain platform for the Bitcoin currency, we refer to it as the “Bitcoin Blockchain.”