Singapore’s private equity market is set to witness the testing of an innovative technology that boosts investor trust and detects fraud.
Thanks to funding by the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Financial Sector Technology and Innovation (FSTI) Innovation Acceleration (IA) grant (FSTI IA), one firm has been able to pilot a unique solution for verifiable data technology in the financial services sector.
The pilot involves implementing support for verifiable transactions in the private equity market, and is the first blockchain-powered initiative with the objective of automating the checking of equity ownership capitalization for private companies in Singapore. This can facilitate greater transparency and liquidity in the private equity markets by building on top of Singapore’s Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA)’s new blockchain-driven trustBar initiative, where data is aggregated from ACRA’s verifiable corporate identities and shared with relevant stakeholders in a consumable and user-friendly dashboard.
The solution is said to have the potential to automate legacy processes while concurrently creating digital trust in an era where fraudulent data is rampant and easy to miss.
The firm behind this solution, Accredify, has partnered UBS for the pilot as well. Some features in testing pipeline include:
- a view of a corporate investor’s portfolio, allowing companies to quickly identify the latest holdings of the investor and the weightage of each holding
- serving as a recommendation engine that suggests similar investors and companies based on an existing portfolio of companies
- simplifying and reducing the cost associated with maintaining verified real-time updates of watch list companies.
- possible future uses for other scenarios such as Know-Your-Customer and mergers and acquisitions
According to Quah Zheng Wei, co-founder and CEO, Accredify: “We’re extremely excited to partner with UBS on this project to introduce verifiable technology to the financial sector. It has always been our goal to apply our technology, TrustTech, to leverage on publicly available verifiable data, such as ACRA’s trustBar, to simplify complex and time-consuming processes in any industry.”
UBS’s Nicole Javellana, ASEAN Head of Client Trading and Execution, and Head of Private Equity Blocks (APAC), said: “Our participation in this industry pilot is one of many ways we are working with fintechs to shape the future of banking, expand our capabilities and continue to deliver valuable services to our clients.”
