Banking and financial sector is one of the sectors that have already started investing in the blockchain. Major financial institutions are actively developing or have planned to implement blockchain in their product roadmaps.
Blockchain brings trust, transparency, and security to financial transactions. This makes no-brainer for financial institutions to invest in blockchain. However, the development will be slow due to blockchain and distributed ledger technology has a learning curve and cost of development. Until now, most of the products were in proof of concept stages.
Last year, financial services industry spent $1.7 billion according to a survey by Greenwich Associates, mostly building proof of concepts and minimum viable products (MVP) but the budget is expected to increase by 67% this year and some of the products will move to development and implementation stages. The survey results are based on over 200 interviews with market participants covering blockchain budgets. The results found indicate that blockchain helps in cost reduction and time to execute transactions and hence leads to less cost, new revenue opportunities, reducing risk and cost of capital.
From the report:
The study results show that blockchain budgets increased 67% last year, with one in 10 of the banks and other companies now reporting blockchain budgets in excess of $10,000,000.
Headcount dedicated to blockchain initiatives doubled in 2017, as banks and other firms launched new proof-of-concept projects or shifted top product implementation. The typical top-tier bank now has about 18 full-time employees working on the technology.