ANZ, CBA, Westpac, IBM and Scentre Group are opening up to early adopters a blockchain platform that in trials has reduced the issuance time for bank guarantees to just one day.
ANZ, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Westpac, IBM and Scentre Group have announced the expansion of a blockchain platform designed to reduce the time needed to issue bank guarantees.
The platform, known as Lygon, is operated by Lygon 1B Pty Ltd, a stand-alone company jointly owned by the five founding members.
A successful pilot involving more than 20 businesses was completed on Lygon last July, whereby the paper-based, slow and costly process of issuing bank guarantees was converted to a digital process, cutting down the time to issue bank guarantees from up to one month to just one day using blockchain technology.
In a statement, the founding members said early adopters will be able to join and use the Lygon platform from September 2020, helping them to save time and reduce fraud risks by digitising the issuance of financial guarantees in retail property leases.
“The commercialisation of the Lygon platform represents a significant milestone for blockchain technology in Australia and globally,” said Lygon chairman Nigel Dobson. “We’ve gone from a proof of concept to a newly incorporated company and commercially available platform in two years – at a time when the demand for digital has never been stronger.”
“In digitising a bank guarantee, we’ve essentially transformed a three-way contract. We’ve digitised the paperwork, the process and the legality behind it. This means wherever there’s a manual, paper-based process based on legal frameworks or similar regulations, we can apply Lygon.”
With the commercial launch of Lygon, the group hopes to expand the range of digitised bank guarantees it provides and explore expansion into New Zealand and other international markets.
“Lygon improves real-time management and visibility of status and lifecycle changes and provides reporting capability of the entire guarantee portfolio across multiple banks and major landlords,” said Laura Li, Head of Finance at MJ Bale, one of the partcipants in last year’s trial.
“We are confident that Lygon will provide benefits to any company that uses bank guarantees as the costs, risks and delays associated with physical documents are eliminated.”
More information on the platform is available here.