Royal Bank of Scotland opens door to FinTech innovations

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is testing its own internal cryptocurrency - created its own currency on its separate systems and issued currency, traded it and settling it between banks - Neil Bellamy, Head of Technology, Media & Telecoms at RBS Natwest told The Memo.

RBS group as a whole includes the Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest, Lombard, RBS Invoice Finance, Ulster Bank and Coutts.

He said that they had a cryptocurrency business come in recently and started testing out their bitcoin distributed ledger technology.

"It's a pipe dream, but imagine if you could take a distributed ledger system and put it in a back office and do away with a lot of that legacy infrastructure”, said Bellamy while discussing the potential of blockchain. “A lot of people think we're going to be very wary and defensive or shy away from some of this newer cryptocurrency [sic] but I think the actual process and the sentiment behind it could be very exciting."

He also said that innovation scouts have been set up in the UK and in the Silicon Valley in order to bring the best financial tech and enterprise innovators to the bank.

When asked about other technology that they have been working on, Bellamy said that they have been funding intangible assets like TV and film production through Coutts bank for years, so now developed a new product where the bank can lend against the intellectual property based in software, attribute a value to it and provide a sale and leaseback to release cash.