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A number of Finnish companies are teaming up to develop a new blockchain-based platform that will digitalize the share ledger, issuance and trading of non-listed company shares.
Participating organizations include digital business and consumer information services provider Asiakastieto Group, financial groups Nordea and OP Group, investment service group Privanet and software and services company Tieto. They are conducting all the development work in Finland.
The project also included experts and advisory from the Finnish Tax Administration, Finnish Patent and Registration Office as well as Borenius Attorneys.
In Finland, a considerable share of household and enterprise financial assets is in non-listed company shares. However, due to lack of digitization in this area, non-listed company shares lack liquidity and the validity of shareholder information is challenging to verify for investors, financial service providers and public authorities. The newly-developed platform leverages blockchain technology to address these issues.
The platform is based on open source Corda and Hyperledger Indy distributed ledger technologies. According to the official announcement on Tieto’s website:
“The platform provides a reliable, simple and entirely digital way for non-listed company share trading by digitalizing the tokenized share register, shareholder register, issuance of new shares and secondary market trading of shares.”
The platform will facilitate information to flow seamlessly between all stakeholders, making non-listed company share trading fully digital, liquid and easy. In addition to reducing administrative burden, it will enhance accessibility and visibility of this asset class for all parties and enable the creation of new financial products and aftermarket services.
”Blockchain presents tremendous opportunities for our society by establishing a new way of creating trust. In cooperation with our customers we’ve been able to demonstrate the potential of the technology by leveraging it in creating a fully digital identity for companies as well as digitalizing the share ledger, issuance and trading of non-listed company shares. This revolutionizes the way investors and startups can transact", says Markus Hautala, Head of Blockchain Solutions at Tieto.
Although developed in collaboration between Finnish industry players, the platform can be scaled outside of Finland, the release said. The blockchain-based business network is currently a proof-of-concept and the project partners intend to start customer pilots in 2019.
