ATB Financial, the Alberta-based financial services provider, will be collaborating with over 75 of the world's largest financial institutions to develop ground-breaking commercial applications for the financial services industry that leverage the appropriate elements of distributed and shared ledger technology.

The R3 team of financial industry veterans, technologists and blockchain and cryptocurrency experts collaborate with consortium members on research, experimentation, design and engineering to help advance this technology to meet banking requirements for identity, privacy, security, scalability, interoperability and integration with legacy systems.

Consortium members work closely with R3 to continue the development of Corda™, an open source distributed ledger platform for recording, managing and synchronising financial agreements. Corda is heavily inspired by and captures the benefits of blockchain systems, but with design choices that make it able to meet the needs of regulated financial institutions.

David Rutter, CEO of R3, commented: "We are delighted to welcome ATB Financial to our ever-growing network of members in Canada. Distributed and shared ledger-inspired technology holds the potential to revolutionise the infrastructure used by participants in all financial markets, and we continue to diversify and grow our member base to reflect the interests of sell- and buy-side firms across the globe."

"What excites ATB Financial the most about joining the R3 consortium is having the ability to collaborate with 75 of the world's largest financial institutions to lead the creation of meaningful solutions that will transform the banking industry of tomorrow," said Wellington Holbrook, ATB's Chief Transformation Officer. "We know through listening to our customers how important it is to get the most out of the technology available to us. Developing distributed and shared ledger technology will benefit the entire banking industry and we're ready to see what's possible."