Deloitte, one of the largest accounting and financial consulting companies in the world, has revealed new partnerships with several blockchain firms at the Consensus 2016 fintech conference; distributed ledger developer BlockCypher; blockchain service provider Bloq; New York-based financial blockchain developer ConsenSys Enterprise; blockchain rewards program firm Loyyal; international remittance company Stellar.
Deloitte has been collaborating with these firms on several blockchain prototypes over the past few months. According to CoinDesk, four prototypes will be demonstrated today at the Consensus 2016 conference, in front of a live audience.
Financial giant Deloitte has formed many partnerships in the blockchain space over the past two years. In October of last year, Deloitte partnered with Israeli blockchain developer Colu. Additionally, in April of this year, the financial giant collaborated with Bank of Ireland on a blockchain-based trade auditing system.
While Deloitte has so far focused primarily on the applications of the technology in the financial arena, Eric Piscini, Principal at Deloitte, told CoinDesk that the new partnerships were formed to bring distributed ledger technology to other industries:
“The expansion outside of banking is happening now in a big way. When you think about insurance or healthcare or retail or trade or commerce in general, you have a lot of opportunities.”
Chicago-based Bloq is working with Deloitte to launch an insurance product that works on various blockchain frameworks. Piscini also revealed that Deloitte has been working with BlockCypher on several banking solutions built on the Ethereum and bitcoin blockchains, in addition to private ones.
Loyyal, formerly known as Ribbit.me, builds blockchain-based rewards and loyalty points programs for corporate clients. Piscini explained that Deloitte’s work with the company focused on applying Loyyal’s existing designs to various employee-employer relations programs.
Piscini also stated that Deloitte decided to expand the scope of their blockchain projects to mitigate the potentials risks involved with committing too many resources in a single industry:
“You don’t want to be attached to one vendor because then you lose your independence and you don’t want to be dependent on one vendor, as well, from a scale and performance and expertise point of view.”
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