Earlier this month, the Banco Central do Brasil (BC) announced the launch of a blockchain platform. The solution, called PIER (Platform for Information Integration of Regulatory Entities), allows the seamless exchange of data between regulatory authorities relating to financial institutions.
So far, the solution is in production with the Central Bank, Brazil’s Securities the Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM), and the Private Insurance Superintendence (SUSEP). The National Superintendency of Complementary Welfare (PREVIC), the pension regulator, is starting tests to onboard to the platform.
The information being shared includes penalties against regulated financial institutions or their officers, registration status, financial performance, and details about regulated firms’ officers and major shareholders. In the future, it may include information from the judiciary, trade boards or international financial bodies.
Currently, queries by financial institutions can take up to a month to process. Regulatory authorities communicate with each other using physical mail and letters and have to access data from other sources to send a reply. The central bank said PIER could cut down this time substantially by enabling automation. In turn, this means the regulators can respond faster to queries from institutions or fintechs.
“This makes it possible to drastically reduce the time period for assessing requirements and relieves participants from attending to requests for information that previously required manual procedures,” said Daniel Bichuette, deputy head of the BC’s Financial System Organization Department.
Additionally, the blockchain tracks all queries made.
“PIER makes the access to information of participants regulated by these institutions (regulators) broader, safer and more direct, strengthening and reducing the bureaucracy of the tasks of supervision, investigation and investigation of irregularities in the sphere of each one,” said Frederico Shu, Analyst of the Development Center in Data Science at CVM.
In other initiatives in Brazil late last year, a civil partnership was notarized using blockchain. São Paulo previously worked with tech firm Constructivo for a blockchain-based platform for public works projects.
