The Central Bank of Brazil has developed a blockchain platform to enable data sharing between Brazilian regulatory authorities.
Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) and other regulators of the Brazilian Financial System (SFN) will exchange information through the Information Integration Platform for Regulators (Pier), which will be operational at the end of 2018.
The platform enables the data exchange between the BCB and other regulators, such as the Superintendence of Private Insurance (Susep), the Securities and Exchange Commission of Brazil (CVM), and the National Pension Funds Authority (Previc).
Initially connected regulators will use Pier for sharing data regarding the authorisation processes for financial institutions, including information on administrative sanctioning processes, the conduct of financial institutions’ officers, and the corporate control of entities regulated by the BCB.
Aristides Cavalcante, deputy head of BCB’s IT Department, said: “Currently there is some exchange of information regarding authorization processes, which are not automated yet: staff from one of the institutions contact the others by letters or e-mails. Even the few queries that are automated by software still require some degree of human intervention.”
The blockchain technology was chosen because it provides a ‘horizontal network of information-sharing between the regulators connected to Pier’. The technology also enables each institution to determine which information, and its format, will be available within the network.
“Traditional business models of information exchange between several entities require a centralizing entity, which ends up exercising a certain degree of operational hierarchical superiority over the remaining ones, which doesn’t necessarily reflect the institutional reality,” Cavalcante added.
“Furthermore, as the blockchain platform records every data request using cryptographic signatures, it is possible to certify at any moment the authorship, and that no entity has tampered with the data, and thus guaranteeing information authenticity.”
BCB expects that institutions will allow access to information relative to administrative sanctioning processes. However, any participant may grant access to any information considered to be of mutual interest as required.
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
