Treasury Digitization - Market Perspectives

10 Treasury and Trade Solutions Figure 7: Applications for Which DLT/Smart Contracts are Being Explored or Pursued Digitizing the Documentation Involved in the Payment Process Enabling a More Seamless End-to-End Payment Process Other Automating OTC FX Dealing and Settlement Automating Commodities Hedging and Settlement 2% 6% 12% 17% 23% Number of Respondents: 204 Driving End-to-End Transparency Blockchain and other DLTs, given their immutable record-keeping ability, promote transparency and trust. While DLT may hold the most disruptive potential, there are currently few compelling treasury use cases. The slow pace of exploration, reflected in Figure 7 , can likely be attributed to the fact that the underlying business case and technology are yet to evolve. The survey shows that where respondents are engaging with DLT, the focus is largely on payments (including trade finance), with an objective of digitizing paper documents and creating a seamless end-to-end process. One of the key impediments to large scale adoption of DLT is the collaboration and buy-in required by players within the ecosystem. Nevertheless, there are a number of DLT-enabled platforms seeking to replace manual processes and paper documents in trade and trade finance, for example. One such platform is komgo, which runs on the Ethereum blockchain. Citi and other financial institutions connect with commodities traders via komgo and digitally exchange contracts, letters of credit, invoices and other related paperwork. Where respondents are engaging with DLT, the focus is largely on payments, with an objective of digitizing paper documents and creating a seamless end-to-end process.