New Zealand SBS bank provides crypto services to customers
The international financial landscape continues to be divided on the cryptocurrency and blockchain issue.
If on the one hand, many people continue to criticize the universe of virtual coins, even blocking their credit cards to prevent the cryptocurrency trading, on the other, there is no mystery on the potential behind blockchain technology.
The latest example comes from New Zealand, where the SBS Bank has been in favour of the latter as a useful means of providing its clients with an improved experience.
The summits of the institute have emphasized, in their last annual meeting, that even if the crypto universe can still raise some scepticism, mostly due to volatility.
The heterogeneous normative framework, however, remains a point of interest to monitor.
Confirmation comes from the group’s CEO, Shaun Drylie, who said:
“Surely, if you look at the volatility of cryptocurrencies the suggestion is that the market is not particularly secure, however, this does not mean that there will be no place for cryptocurrencies in the bank’s future. For the moment it is an area that we are keeping an eye on but it is not certain when it will become a real opportunity.“
The bank’s intention is to be able to exploit the blockchain system to make banking more efficient, but above all to offer a 360° banking experience, thus avoiding users having to physically go to the branches for operations that could instead be carried out from home, while maintaining the guarantee of a secure transition.
The managing director wanted to emphasize the concept that the blockchain technology would allow developing financial inclusiveness.
What is this about? In reality, the term includes a number of advantages and, of these, the most obvious is to be able to obtain credits through a process facilitated, faster and less cumbersome for the user but, above all, cheaper for the bank itself.
Moreover, inclusiveness would increase the possibility of obtaining loans to a wider range of customers than at present.
The advantages are innumerable: the data of anyone applying for funding could be stored and could be easily accessed through the blockchain register, to the advantage of a series of paper documents that would thus become obsolete.
It is not the first bank to take advantage of these great opportunities: Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) and IBM already had a partnership to create an efficient system for the insurance sector, a system that allowed them to quickly process all the practices regarding reconciliation as well as fully digitize the bank guarantee process.
