CBA’s Innovation Lab In Hong Kong Can Dispel Some Misconceptions About Blockchain Technology

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) on Tuesday announced the launch an Innovation Lab in Hong Kong and its plans to launch an Innovation Lab in London later this year. Calling this as a “natural extension” of its successful Innovation Lab in Sydney, the Bank said that the innovation network creates a global approach to innovation that connects customers, employees and start-up communities to the latest FinTech developments. 

The Hong Kong Lab has three main zones – the incubation garage space, collaboration hub, and usability room – that aim to encourage collaboration and drive experimentation. The first zone helps cross-functional project teams collaborate on bringing ideas to life. The second facilitates co-creation with clients to find bespoke solutions, deep dive into specific challenges and test prototypes. And the third provides a live testing facility to the clients and the latest eye-tracking technology to develop their digital platforms.

“Hong Kong’s highly developed financial sector, strong entrepreneurial culture and proximity to China makes it the optimal location for us to establish an innovation presence in Asia”, said Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, Group Executive, Institutional Banking and Markets, Commonwealth Bank. “The Hong Kong Lab will allow us to partner with the brightest minds across the city’s accelerator, government, university, start-up and FinTech communities to further develop creative and innovative solutions for our clients.”

Rosmarin also pointed out that in just one year, the Sydney Innovation Lab hosted more than 40,000 guests, successfully built a live blockchain and collaborated with major Australian corporates, government organisations and universities to experiment with future technology. 

At the launch, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Professor K C Chan said that he is very delighted that the CBA is working on the blockchain concept and that it can help to dispel some of the misconceptions about the blockchain technology in Hong Kong.

“Blockchain has interesting applications and when applied rightly it actually reduces the transaction cost tremendously for the banking sector”, he said.

The bank has been taking interest in the blockchain technology. Last year, it announced that it will use Ripple technology to facilitate payments between its subsidiaries, describing distributed protocols as "the way of the future" and also joined the R3 blockchain consortium. Also, a team of Commonwealth Bank of Australia computer engineers built a working "blockchain" towards the end of 2015.

"It [blockchain technology] is clearly ... faster, cheaper and more transparent than some of the existing practices we have today," said David Whiteing, chief information officer of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. "But more importantly than that, as we've looked at this and explored and experimented, it goes way beyond just banking, and from our perspective, that's an exciting opportunity as well."