NAME: 1. How did you personally become involved in blockchain?
In 2017, I started working on our small and medium business financing platform where the idea was to collect financial data on businesses from alternative sources such as point of sale systems, billing and accounting systems, etc., and then use the data for credit risk assessment. Our system was first built as a cloud-hosted, client-server SaaS application and then we realized that businesses did not want to share financial data to a centralized data store such as ours, and lenders were not willing to trust credit assessments based on data that was prone to manipulation by businesses. And that is how we got started on blockchain— essentially using it to record financial data in a distributed manner and yet not being prone to manipulation.
2. What does your firm do/offer within the blockchain sector?
Our business is a financial services platform that issues structured investment products to investors, and uses the capital raised to invest in a variety of assets such as private equity, private debt, etc. We use blockchain technology in applications we use or plan to use for risk assessment, investment management and issuing.
3. What is your role within your firm and what do you do there on any given day?
Verified is a group of companies based across Switzerland, India, Singapore and Luxembourg. I am the founder of the group and my role spans different functions but on any given day, most of my time goes to business development and product management.
4. What area/s of blockchain do you believe will grow the most in the coming 5 years?
Applications in financial services is a good target for blockchains due to high volumes, lots of time spent in administering services, and high cost of intermediaries. Applications in capital markets, financing, investment management, payments, custody, insurance, etc are already being piloted and deployed by many companies. Apart from financial services, I think supply chain management is another area where blockchains would add significant value.
5. What do you believe the next major innovation in financial technology will be and why?
I think a major but often not very appreciated aspect of digital financial services are that of identity management and custody services for digital assets. I think there is a large need for these basic services and I expect innovation and deployment of services and applications in these areas.