R3 welcomes Ping An as first Chinese member of blockchain consortium

Ping An Group, China’s second-largest insurance firm, has become the first Chinese member of R3 CEV, an international blockchain consortium, reported Reuters.

Ping An joins more than 40 of the world’s biggest banks and financial institutions that compose the group, which was brought together last year by New York-based financial technology firm R3.

As Reuters pointed out, Chinese financial institutions – some of the biggest in the world – had been conspicuously absent in R3 CEV.

David Rutter, CEO of R3, called Ping An’s membership “an important milestone,” reported the news agency.

Jessica Tan, Ping An’s chief operating officer, said, “We are excited about joining R3 and look forward to developing and using blockchain technology to create a more efficient way of managing financial assets end-to-end.”

Meanwhile, Ripple is reportedly poised to join forces with R3 CEV. On May 19, Ripple founder and CEO Chris Larsen tweeted: “The future of fintech is bringing together like-minded companies, like @R3CEV and @Ripple. More details to come soon…”

Bank Innovation speculated on the possible relationship, citing a July 2015 evaluation of Ripple prepared by R3 research director Jo Lang.

The evaluation observed several weaknesses in Ripple’s network, in particular a dependence on third-party validators. It also raised concerns about the possibility that the distributed financial technology company might increase reliance on its native cryptocurrency, XRP.

Bank Innovation suggested Ripple’s positioning of its technology allowing banks worldwide to directly transact without a central counterparty aligns with R3 CEV’s goals. In April, R3 announced the launch of its own distributed ledger Corda, which supports a range of consensus mechanisms and has no native cryptocurrency.

Image via an earlier press release from R3