In a new survey, market intelligence firm Greenwich Associates has found that the financial services industry is spending about $1.7 billion on blockchain annually.

For the survey, the firm conducted over 200 interviews with market participants covering blockchain budgets, team sizes, use case exploration, key challenges and other issues. On the basis of the survey, Greenwich concluded that the financial services industry is spending around $1.7 billion on blockchain technology per year, as banks and other firms are moving beyond the proof-of-concept (PoC) stage and start rolling out commercial distributed ledger technology (DLT) products.

Key takeaways from the report:

• Blockchain budgets surged 67% in 2017, with one in 10 of the banks and other companies now reporting blockchain budgets in excess of $10 million.
• Headcount dedicated to blockchain initiatives doubled in 2017, as banks and other firms launched new PoC projects or shifted top product implementation.
• 14 percent of the banks and other companies claimed to have successfully deployed a production blockchain solution. Payments and trade finance are the businesses targeted most frequently.
• According to the survey, cost reduction is the biggest driver of blockchain investment and development for financial service firms.

“More than half the executives we interviewed told us that implementing DLT was harder than they expected,” says Richard Johnson, Vice President of Greenwich Associates Market Structure and Technology and author of the new report, Blockchain Adoption in Capital Markets – 2018. “Nevertheless, more than three-quarters of projects currently under development are expected to be live within two years.”