ING executive: Our bank is fully exploring blockchain, and will give up if it doesn’t work

“It takes a lot of effort.”

So says Mark Buitenhek global head of transaction services at Dutch bank and financial services group ING.

In a recent interview with CoinDesk, Buitenhek said ING is actively pursuing a broad and far-reaching process of exploring blockchain technology, including partnering with other banks around the world and conducting cross-departmental blockchain pilot projects internally.

ING is a member of the R3CEV blockchain consortium.

"All of our businesses will participate in the blockchain trial, including the global transaction services organization I lead, our financial markets, and our loan services department. Internal participants are also very broad, including IT, operations, and customer department staff."

According to Buitenhek, ING sees potential for various applications of blockchain in banking and finance environments, including securities and trade settlement, internal processing, electronic identity, and as a supporting network to connect different devices.

“We do see the potential of blockchain, but we are not sure whether it can be realized. But if it can work, it will have a huge impact on the financial industry. That’s why we decided to invest time, energy and money.”

Staff-led initiatives

Buitenhek said one of the forces driving ING's exploration of the bitcoin blockchain was that many people within the bank were already privately exploring the technology.

“Two years ago, around 2013, we started to pay attention to this technology because we found that many of our IT staff (more than 100 people) were playing with blockchain applications, including Bitcoin, and we were not aware of it.”

Buitenhek said the process of exploring the technology has truly become a "bottom-up" process, rather than the top-down changes of the past.

“This is also a new symbol of the times.”

Hard work pays off

As part of a 30-bank collaborative blockchain project, ING said it gave R3’s blockchain project a boost and hoped the efforts would bear fruit next year.

The early efforts appear to be paying off. In a recent interview, Tim Swanson, head of market research at R3, told the Sydney Morning Herald that the R3 blockchain project could see results within a year from now.

Buitenhek gave a positive assessment of the initial phase of the project:

“It’s still a long way to go but we’re really happy to be part of it. We’ve had our first conference successfully and the people ING sent to it came back very happy. So we believe we’re on the right track.”

Seeking Problem Solving

Despite the potential for blockchain applications, Buitenhek said ING’s exploration will focus on solving operational problems for banks.

“We want to see if blockchain can be a solution to our operational problems. It’s one of the things we’re looking at, but it’s not the only answer.”

He pointed out that although banks have been working hard to introduce new technologies in the past decade or so and have spent millions, none of them have had a significant impact or generated sufficient demand.

To that end, Buitenhek went on to say that the bank plans to spend the next few years observing the effects of blockchain technology both inside and outside of the R3 blockchain project.

He said:

"R3 is our observation channel. In the next two to three years, we will spend energy, time and money on it... If the effect is not obvious, we will look at other technologies."

Original article: http://www.coindesk.com/ing-all-our-business-lines-involved-in-blockchain-exploration/
By Stan Higgins
Translator: printemps
Editor: printemps
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/ing-blockchain)