Financial innovation company R3 announced today that it has concluded its distributed ledger bank membership round with the addition of 12 new banks, thus taking the total number of such members to 42.
Following its September launch, the company has registered significant interest in the consortium from financial services companies around the world. Recently, LeapRate reported that Russia’s Sberbank is willing to join the initiative too. But whereas the plans of the Russian banks are still… plans, other banks have jumped on board of the consortium.
BMO Financial Group, Danske Bank A/S (CPH:DANSKE), Intesa Sanpaolo SpA (BIT:ISP), Natixis SA (EPA:KN), Nomura Holdings, Inc. (TYO:8604), Northern Trust Corporation (NASDAQ:NTRS), OP Financial Group, Banco Santander, S.A. (BME:SAN), Scotiabank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) and Westpac Banking Corp (ASX:WBC) are the latest banks to join the consortium which has amid its principal tasks the designing and applying of distributed ledger technologies to global financial markets.
Now that the window for the admission of new bank members is closed under the consortium’s formative agreement, R3 will be focusing its efforts on broader engagement with a diverse range of non-bank institutions.
David Rutter, CEO of R3 comments:
“Partnering with a broad range of institutions has always been central to our strategy of developing distributed ledger technologies that will truly benefit the financial services industry as a whole. Securing the backing of 42 of the world’s leading banks demonstrates the level of interest in our initiative, and we now look forward to exploring collaboration with non-bank institutions and expanding our already diverse group.”
You can view the announcement from R3 by clicking here.