With the aim of building Singapore into a smart financial centre where innovation is pervasive and technology is used widely, MAS issued a consultation paper on 6 June 2016 proposing guidelines for a regulatory sandbox. The consultation was directed at financial institutions (FIs) as well as financial technology (“FinTech”) players looking to experiment with innovative financial products, services or processes that are or are likely to be regulated by MAS. Within the confines of this…
The history of trade financing is twinned with the history of fraud and forgery in commerce. In 2014 for example, Standard Chartered Plc reportedly wrote down US $193 million after a Chinese-based metal-trading company allegedly pledged commodities multiple times as collateral for loans. Blockchain technology is vaunted as the new hope to weed out fraud in trade financing. What is blockchain?Simply put, a blockchain acts as a record ledger shared and accessible by various participants. Instead…