Financial innovation firm R3 has announced Credicorp as the first Spanish-speaking Latin American financial institution to join its consortium to design and apply distributed and shared ledger-inspired technologies to global financial markets.

As the largest financial services company in Peru, Credicorp provides corporate and personal banking, brokerage services, and other financial services across its six principal subsidiaries. The company also operates in other South American countries including Bolivia, Columbia and Chile, and is listed on the Lima and New York stock exchanges.

Credicorp will collaborate with 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 work together 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 developing Corda™, its open source financial grade distributed ledger platform that records, executes and manages institutions’ financial agreements in perfect synchrony with their peers. 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 comments: “R3 is the largest collaborative consortium of its kind in financial markets, now comprising over 70 members from all corners of the industry. Credicorp’s expertise and knowledge of Latin American markets will be a key asset as we continue to establish our footprint in the region.”

Luis Alfonso Carrera, Head of Corporate Banking at Credicorp comments: “From our InnovaCXión Center, we are creating digital, user-friendly products and services that will improve our clients’ banking experience. Joining R3 is part of our digital transformation strategy and will consolidate our leadership in technological innovation in Peru and across the region.”

Mauricio Alban, Chief Architect at Banco de Credito del Peru (BCP), a subsidiary of Credicorp, comments: "As the Internet revolutionized the transfer and sharing of information in the 1990s, blockchain will revolutionize the transfer and sharing of values. Blockchain's social impact will be enormous because it significantly improves the traceability and transparency of financial transactions."

Credicorp will join the global network of R3 members united in the R3 Lab and Research Centre, which has quickly become a center of gravity for collaborative research and testing of distributed and shared-ledger inspired technologies.