Banking and financial services industry are heavily dependent on the new-age digital technology for further progress. Microsoft is one of the many tech companies intimately involved with the cryptocurrency sector facilitating the development of blockchain technology for financial applications.
In its recent blog post, the company has offered details about the participation of Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft Corporation in the Fintech Ideas Festival. The event held between January 9 and 10, 2017 in San Francisco saw the participation of some of the leading names in the technology and financial service industry.
The discussions in Fintech Ideas Event revolved around the potential uses of latest technologies in the field which hasn’t changed much in the past decade. The forces driving financial services towards a new era include cloud-based solutions, artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.
The blog mentions Microsoft’s role in ushering a new era for fintech. The company’s products and services are currently used by the likes of MetLife, Emirates National Bank of Dubai, Societe Generale, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Temenos. Microsoft’s Azure cloud services is a common factor among all these companies.
MetLife and Emirates National Bank of Dubai are using Azure, its Machine Learning component and Microsoft Dynamics to improve customer experience and relationship. On the other hand, Bank of America Merrill Lynch is using the company’s Blockchain as a Service to automate various processes.
“Bank of America Merrill Lynch is working with Microsoft Treasury to use Azure Blockchain as a Service to transform and automate the processes for standby letters of credit, reducing process time from 3-5 weeks to 3-5 days, taking the error rate down to zero percent and significantly reducing the cost to pennies on the dollar.”
The use of Azure Blockchain as a Service is not limited to Bank of America. The company has already collaborated with R3 Blockchain Consortium to offer its cloud services for financial distributed ledger implementation by its partner institutions. Similarly, other companies like IBM, Red Hat and others are also heavily invested in blockchain technology making it a worthwhile investment given its future potential.
Ref: Microsoft Blog | Image: NewsBTC