HSBC goes lives on the UAE KYC blockchain platform

By Leandra Monteiro

Dubai Economy and HSBC have strengthened the UAE KYC (Know Your Customer) Blockchain Consortium with HSBC becoming the fourth founding member to go live on the platform.

The UAE KYC Blockchain Platform is a national ecosystem for the exchange of verified “know your customer” data between licensing authorities and financial institutions. This market leading initiative was launched in February 2020 by Dubai Economy in partnership with founding member banks. The initiative is powered by norbloc, a global leader in enterprise blockchain technologies that enable sharing of regulated data.

“Dubai Economy is delighted with HSBC going live on the UAE KYC Blockchain Platform. Investors now have an additional choice of digitally opening bank account with the international bank. The UAE KYC Blockchain Platform has transformed the investor bank account journey by significantly reducing the time it takes to establish relationship with banks. This will positively improve UAE’s ranking in global Ease of Doing Business index,” said Omar Al Mehairi, Director of Development and Follow-up Division, the Business Registration & Licensing sector of Dubai Economy.

“The UAE KYC Blockchain Platform supports the vision of the Invest in Dubai (IID) Portal by facilitating instant opening of bank accounts for investors. We are also pleased to see newly onboarded licensing entities and financial institutions in the implementation phase. As the initiative continues to scale up, we hope to see more local and international banks onboard the initiative”, added Omar Al Mehairi.

The initiative will lead to significantly improved customer data quality in the UAE, which will underpin the future expansion of the network and its evolving use as a comprehensive customer data ecosystem. HSBC can now benefit from the KYC data for their customer onboarding as well as receive data updates for their existing customers.

Abdulfattah Sharaf, Group General Manager, CEO of HSBC UAE and Head of International, HSBC Bank Middle East Limited said, “HSBC’s ambitious growth strategy in the UAE is underpinned by investment in digital infrastructures such as the UAE KYC Blockchain platform. By being able to access up-to-date KYC data directly from Dubai Economy, we will be able to serve customers faster and focus more on their core banking needs.”

This is yet another major milestone following the recent agreement between Dubai Economy and Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Authority to consolidate efforts and expand the UAE KYC (Know Your Customer) Blockchain Consortium positioning it as the national corporate e-KYC Platform, making it the first such platform in the region.

Astyanax Kanakakis, CEO and co-founder of norbloc said, “The team at norbloc is thrilled with the performance of the UAE KYC Blockchain Platform. With the addition of every participating institution such as HSBC, the Fides-based platform, on which the ecosystem runs, delivers more value, efficiency gains, and cost reduction to its members. This cutting-edge technology is providing a significantly better KYC experience for both clients and institutions, and it will continue to provide more benefits to the participants as it develops and additional features are added.”