IBM and Santiago Exchange partner for worlds first blockchain securities lending solution

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Chile’s Santiago Exchange, the largest in the country have announced a partnership to introduce blockchain technology across the country’s financial sector. The agreement makes the Santiago Exchange the first stock market in Latin America to apply IBM Blockchain technology within its short selling system for securities lending.

Blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT) works as an immutable ledger that records transactions, allowing secure information exchange. Built by IBM and Chile’s Santiago Exchange, the solution is designed to help reduce errors, possible fraud, and processing time for each transaction, while also improving transaction management and lowering costs. In the case of the Santiago Exchange, the solution will result in significant time savings for the back-office processes.

IBM Chile General Manager, Francisco Thiermann, highlighted the fact that the Santiago Exchange is the first stock exchange in Latin America to implement a securities lending blockchain solution stating “our agreement with Santiago Exchange marks another new era of innovation in the stock market. Santiago Exchange is a pioneer in its industry, and the blockchain adoption establishes a transformational precedent in the financial market, not just in Chile but in this region and the world.”

The solution developed by IBM is based on the open source Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Fabric. The solution is expected to be widely available to support multiple parties across the financial industry ecosystem this year.