Chinese conglomerate Ping An Insurance is applying blockchain-driven smart contracts across the full range of its operations—banking, securities, fund and property subsidiaries.
A report by Sina that was translated by China Banking News said that all eight of Ping An’s subsidiaries are making use of the ALFA smart contract cloud platform now, just launched by Ping An’s fintech arm, OneConnect.
The Alfa platform was just launched last week, utilising artificial intelligence and blockchain for end-to-end smart contract management, with the goal of meeting financial institution need for a whole contract cycle and process management. The platform records the entire contract drafting, editing, execution and implementation on blockchain, with all contract parties as blockchain nodes.
According to Reuters, Alfa contains contract databases based on seven major financial industries: bank, fund, security, trust, leasing, futures and insurance. OneConnect claims that the platform contains more than 1,000 standard contract templates, and a label bookshelf consisting of more than 80,000 labels.
The platform can be applied using API, for the purposes of integration into existing operating systems.
OneConnect said that the smart contract platform could reduce the need for time-consuming contract drafting.
OneConnect’s General Manager Assistant, Huang Shao Yu said:
“In the past when drafting contracts, it was normal to fill in two or three pages of information. A single ABS management plan would need two people to work on it for around two or three weeks.”
“Following the launch of the smart contract cloud platform, one person can complete item entry within just half an hour.”
OneConnect representatives further elaborated that they have solutions planned for seven or eight sectors, and will be gradually integrating the data required for each sector.
The company estimates that the platform could help reduce operational risk by 80%, and labour costs by roughly two-thirds. The company expects Alfa to appeal to financial products with complex transaction structures that are difficult to standardise, and interbank transactions in particular.
For example, the smart contract platform helps to standardise cross-institutional contracts by using artificial intelligence to sift through for provisions that have a high probability of changes, and utilising standardised versions for the remaining provisions that generally have a market consensus.
Featured image via Ping An
