Finastra signs three more banks to blockchain-based syndicated loan community

The online marketplace - which entailed input from seven global banks including State Street, BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon, HSBC and ING - is designed to bring more transparency and efficiency to the heavily manual loan market, using blockchain technology to communicate between lenders and agents to assure messages are secure and confidential.

BNP Paribas, Natixis and Societe Generale are the latest to cutover to the platform following an early lead from NatWest, which went live in October last year. 

Using the technology, the banks are able to specify and publish lender-specific deal information directly from agent bank loan servicing platforms - such as Finastra’s Fusion Loan IQ - to Fusion LenderComm in real-time. This data was previously only periodically provided by fax from agents or through telephone or email queries from lenders.

Philippe Boulas, global head of corporate banking operations at BNP Paribas says: “With the creation of this community and a collaborative mindset we have a unique opportunity to tackle the operational pain points we have all been experiencing for years and that constrain syndicated loan market expansion.”

While the first phase of the platform has focused on real-time position reporting between lenders, a roadmap has been developed with the aim of transforming all aspects of syndicated lending from deal set-up and syndicate building through to settlement.