French bancassurance group announced it successfully tested permissioned blockchain for user verification in full compliance with Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements.

Following successful results of the pilot project, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa considers incorporating blockchain for customer verification in their system. Currently, they are working to create a single cross-businesses KYC platform to cover all bank processes and reduce data duplication.

“Blockchain is a transformative agent in our operational application, as proven by this project – the first of its kind in France. This pilot offers a complete view of customers' documents across our distributed network,” said Frédéric Laurent, COO Innovation & Operations for Crédit Mutuel Arkéa.

Through the improvement facilitating and securing their administrative procedures the group hopes to raise customers’ loyalty and satisfaction.

The pilot project was realised using the blockchain expertise of IBM and the open-source Hyperledger Project fabric.

“The availability of IBM Blockchain services and DevOps tools on IBM innovation platform Bluemix was key to accelerate the time-to-value during the development phase,” said Juliette Macret, IBM Financial Services Sector Business Development Director for IBM France.

Crédit Mutuel Arkéa is not the first company to enjoy IBM support with a blockchain project. Mizuho, the leading bank in Japan, has recently partnered the corporation to test a token-based settlement system. The solution is also based on the open source code contributed by IBM to the Hyperledger Project.

Other French financial organisations also demonstrate keen interest to the distributed ledger. Earlier in June 2016, BNP Paribas Securities Services announced it launches a laboratory to explore the potential of blockchain and big data technologies.

A few weeks earlier BNP Paribas became one of the seven French and European companies to create a blockchain-based post-trading infrastructure. The signatories to the Memorandum include French bank Société Générale, state-run Caisse des Dépôts and four other French-based and European financial organisations – Euroclear, Euronext, S2iEM and Paris Europlace.

Anna Lavinskaya