SABB becomes first bank in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to join R3 blockchain consortium

The Saudi British Bank (SABB) has become the first bank in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to join the global blockchain consortium led by enterprise software firm R3, TradeArabia reported September 11.

Headquartered in Riyadh, the Saudi British Bank is a Saudi Joint Stock Company and is an associated company of the HSBC Group. The move to join R3 consortium comes amid the bank’s larger efforts aimed at offering value-added digital solutions to its clients.

“We are extremely pleased to join R3 which puts SABB at the cutting edge of financial innovation, giving our clients all the far-reaching advantages of transaction-speed and security that flow from the DLT based solutions,” David Dew, managing director of SABB, said.

R3’s global network counts over 200 banks, financial services firms, technology companies, central banks, regulators, and trade associations. It offers access to Corda – an enterprise-grade distributed ledger platform for finance and commerce.

“As one of the leading international banks in the Kingdom, SABB’s experience will be invaluable to R3. Using Corda, SABB will be able to actively participate and work towards development of solutions based on blockchain to meet the growing needs of its customers,” David E Rutter, CEO of R3, said.