A new report from the World Economic Forum has found that the blockchain will come to occupy a central place in the global financial system.

The report, “The future of financial infrastructure: An ambitious look at how blockchain can reshape financial services”, considered the impact of implementing distributed ledger technology across nine sectors of financial services, and found that blockchain can and will reshape financial services, be it with the proviso that doing so requires careful collaboration with other emerging technologies, regulators, incumbents and additional stakeholders to be successful.

Key findings included:

• Distributed ledger technology (blockchain) has the potential to drive simplicity and efficiency by establishing new financial services infrastructure and processes

• Distributed ledger technology will form the foundation of next generation financial services infrastructure in conjunction with other existing and emerging technologies

• Similar to technological advances in the past, new financial services infrastructure will transform and question traditional orthodoxies in today’s business models

• The most impactful distributed ledger technology applications will require deep collaboration between incumbents, innovators, and regulators, adding complexity and delaying implementation

“Rather than stay at the margins of the finance industry, blockchain will become the beating heart of it,” World Economic Forum head of financial services industries Giancarlo Bruno told The New York Times. “The technology will help build innovative solutions across the industry, becoming ever more integrated into the structure of financial services, as mainframes, messaging services, and electronic trading did before it.”

Widespread adoption

While predicting the future use of blockchain-based scenarios in financial markets, the report also found that its future use may not be far away, with 80 percent of surveyed banks now in the process of, or are currently working on blockchain projects. Large central banks are also studying how the blockchain will alter the way money moves around the globe.

Much of the report repeats what many in the industry likely  already know: the blockchain will revolutionize the financial industry, and that those in the know are putting their money where their mouths are, with funding for blockchain companies continuing to surge this year after the technology came of age in 2015.

Nonetheless the tick of approval, of sorts, from the WEF, is another vote of confidence for the space.

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