Yesterday, ABN AMRO announced that it is participating in a Dutch Blockchain Coalition (DBC) trade mission to Singapore. This week the Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF) and Week of Innovation at Technology (SWITCH) are being held, with multiple Dutch firms taking part.
As the DBC explained yesterday, Netherlands-based companies partnered with the Dutch government for blockchain development in June. The parties are this week attending the Singaporean events to collaborate on various use cases and foster new business relationships overseas.
‘Blockchain for Good’ challenges
The DBC’s role is to coordinate the firms involved in Partners for International Business (PIB) and organize ‘challenges’ to be worked on during the SFF/SWITCH week. These firms include ABN AMRO, TNO, the Port of Rotterdam, The Hague Security Delta and the Dutch ministries of Foreign Affairs, Economic Affairs and Climate, Justice & Security, and Infrastructure and Water.
ABN AMRO and IBM have worked together on initiating a challenge on how blockchain can be used for client due diligence (CDD) and financial crime prevention. It counts the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), ING, De Nederlandsche Bank, ConsenSys, and R3 as participants.
On the challenge, ABN AMRO’s Ivich Hoffman of the Detecting Financial Crime department said: “Many public and private parties, both domestic and international, are working on innovations to detect and prevent financial crime. During this challenge, we will exchange best practices and explore where and how we can work together. We can use these takeaways in Dutch banks’ current investigation into creating a joint body to monitor payment transactions.”
At the SFF/SWITCH events, there are also blockchain challenges on cross-border credentialing, educational certificates, chain of evidence, health insurance, and agriculture. These hope to bring the authorities of Singapore and the Netherlands together for innovating in these sectors.
“Both countries have strong ecosystems on the blockchain front. And ABN AMRO has acquired a great deal of experience with blockchain pilots and platforms such as VAKT, Komgo, Forcefield and DELIVER,” said Marjan van der Plas, Senior Innovation Manager of DLT ecosystems at ABN AMRO.
Singapore as a blockchain leader
Singapore is currently a hotbed of blockchain innovation. The government partly owns cross-border trade platform Global eTrade Services (GeTS) which uses the technology for certificates of origin and more recently welcomed Pacific International and Swivel as members.
Other state-backed projects include e-bills of lading, stock settlement, and the MAS’s innovation sandbox and blockchain payments initiatives.
Singaporean firms DBS Bank, Agrocorp, MetLife’s LumenLab, accelerator Tribe, and sgCarMart are just some of those working on blockchain. In the last week, DBS and Trafigura were the first to use an International Chamber of Commerce solution in the country, and JP Morgan ran a pilot with the MAS.
