Barclays’ Smart Contract Templates Selected For Its Accelerator Programme

Smart Contract Templates, an internal team of Barclays Bank focused on smart contracts on the blockchain, has been selected to participate in the bank's accelerator programme this year.

The team, led by Dr Lee Braine of the Investment Bank CTO Office at Barclays, is developing a technology for capital markets that enables financial products to be defined in a novel way, permitting both legal contracts and executable business logic to be generated.

"We saw an opportunity to contribute to technology research in the area of smart contracts by exploring in greater depth a specific topic that hasn't received great attention to date: connecting legal prose with business logic via a common language”, Braine told IBTimes UK.

He further noted that while there are several potential use cases of smart contracts, they are initially focusing on financial products in capital markets that already have a “high degree of contract standardisation.”

“I'm excited to lead this Smart Contract Templates team through the Accelerator and build on its executive sponsorship from Brad Novak, the Chief Technology Officer for the Investment Bank at Barclays”, Braine added.

Finextra reported that the Barclays team is one of the 11 companies that have been selected from a diverse pool of 700 applicants from across 77 countries. The unit will join a group of small startups working on innovations in compliance-as-a-service, smart insurance, IoT, payments, social impact investing, underbanked savings, and cyber security. 

Chris Adelsbach, Managing Director at Techstars, said that the 2016 Barclays Accelerator in London “will be the third class in London and the fourth of the global Barclays Accelerator program”. On 25th January, the first day of the session was held and it will run until the demo day on April 18th.