SEB, the Nordic financial services group, and Nasdaq have announced a joint project to test a developed prototype for a mutual fund trading platform based on blockchain technology.

The aim is to increase efficiency in the processing of purchases and sales of fund units and to create a unit ledger – an area which today is largely characterised by manual routines, long settlement cycles and paper driven processes.

The concept of the project indicates that, by subscribing to a private blockchain, the various market participants will be able to share a distributed database in which all transactions and changes are registered among all participants in real-time.

The cooperation agreement entails that SEB and Nasdaq will continue to develop the technology with the end goal of creating a working prototype, which will be based on the Chain.com blockchain ledger.

In addition, the two parties have opened a channel for collaboration with additional interested parties on building a uniformed market infrastructure for Sweden’s fund market.

Göran Fors, acting head of investor services at SEB, said: “With the help of a blockchain we can create a faster, simpler, more effective and reliable fund market. Funds are increasingly important for our clients and it is with great pleasure that we can announce this important project together with Nasdaq.”

Magnus Haglind, SVP and head of product management, market technology at Nasdaq, added: “By leveraging blockchain technology there is strong potential for improvement via digitalization that can reduce manual work, create a faster process and reduce the risk for errors.

“This development will look to benefit the fund market and, in the end, also the individual investors through faster response from purchases and sales.”

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