R3 distributed ledger consortium has been seeing increased number of members in the recent past and the consortium presently comprise of over 80 of the world's leading financial institutions and regulators. Adding to its member portfolio, Alberta-based financial services firm ATB Financial announced that it has joined the blockchain consortium.

ATB Financial will work on designing and applying blockchain and shared-ledger inspired technologies to the global financial markets. It will be collaborating with the consortium members in order to develop ground-breaking commercial applications that will leverage the potentials of blockchain technology, for the financial services industry.

“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 revolutionize 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,” David Rutter, CEO of R3, stated in the release.

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

The R3 consortium members will be working to continue the development of Corda, an open source distributed ledger platform for recording, managing and synchronizing financial agreements.

“What excites ATB Financial the most about joining the R3 consortium is having the ability to collaborate with over 75 of the world’s largest financial institutions to lead the creation of meaningful solutions that will transform the banking industry of tomorrow. Developing distributed and shared ledger technology will benefit the entire banking industry and we’re ready to see what’s possible,” Wellington Holbrook, ATB’s Chief Transformation Officer, said.