Blockchain – The Great Hope for KYC with Royston Da Costa

Announcer  00:01

Craig, welcome to the Treasury Update Podcast presented by Strategic Treasurer. Your source for interesting treasury news, analysis, and insights in your car, at the gym, or wherever you decide to tune in.

Craig Jeffery  00:18

Welcome to the Treasury Update Podcast. I’m Craig Jeffery. I’m your host for this episode. I’m joined by Royston da Costa from Ferguson Enterprises. Royston, thank you for joining me on the podcast again.

Royston DaCosta  00:32

Hey, Craig, looking forward to this session on blockchain.

Craig Jeffery  00:35

And we’ll get into just a little bit about Royston’s bio. For those who haven’t listened to the other podcasts we’ve done. Today’s episode is called “Blockchain: The Great Hope for Know Your Customer.” But let’s get into it. Maybe we could start, Royston, with a quick definition, maybe a layman’s definition for what is blockchain?

Royston DaCosta  00:56

Yeah, I think that’s an excellent idea, Craig. And as much as I feel this is probably one of the simplest definitions, it’s impossible not to use one or two buzz words in there. Blockchain technology is a decentralized digital ledger that records transactions across many computers in a way that ensures the data is secure, transparent and tamper resistant. It also allows information to be shared without a central authority, with each transaction being verified by a network of users, creating a chain of blocks that cannot and that’s very important in terms of blockchain cannot be altered once recorded. That’s it. That’s simply what blockchain is. I know it sounds simple, but there’s a lot more around it.

Craig Jeffery  01:47

I’m not, I’m not sure it sounded simple. It sounded clear, but there sounds like, there’s a lot of parts, like, it’s secure, it’s transparent, it can’t be identified. You know, the decentralized part is instead of like, central like, let’s say everything’s stored at a bank or at a central bank. Now it’s stored and saved on different ledgers or different sources of truth that can be checked on the transparent site. That’ll be interesting when we talk about KYC, because there’s some aspects of you don’t want information about, know your customer for everyone to look at and say, there’s, there’s limits to that transparency,

Royston DaCosta  02:20

And these are where you get some of the challenges and hurdles that we need to overcome, on that need to be overcome by the industry. But one thing I want to stress here, Craig, and you’re quite right, it’s not, it’s hard to really, in my view. I mean, sure, there’s probably someone has got a better definition in terms of layman’s terms, but I feel that, you know, it’s a technology that you don’t want to let it sound underestimate but also misinterpret, because all those words are quite important in themselves. You know the decentralized you mentioned, and, of course, being secure, and then the fact that also, you know, you’re creating a chain of blocks. It depends on the audience as well. But you know, someone who’s not maybe working in in Treasury, or maybe has a kind of exposure to the types of technologies that are already available might not understand what does that actually mean? So, you know, the degree to which you can go into explaining this in kind of, like, really, really broken, and there’s a way of doing that, but I just felt getting a basic definition, but also the same time, not wishing to insult anyone’s intelligence, this is probably the best definition I’ve come across. Believe me, I’ve actually got a more complex definition I can read out now, but I don’t think you’d want me to do that. So in terms of decentralization, I mean, it’s pretty obvious that is referring to no central authority controlling the data. One thing I should mention, though, and again, when you look at any technology, there’s always going to be some evolution or some sort of variation. And Bucha is no different. I am aware that they have what they call a closed loop and an open loop. So probably, I mean, the definition I’ve given is more open loop, which means that anyone in theory, could access this, this, this, this blockchain, but they’d have to be able to go through all the the kind of the steps that I’ve described in the in the definition. And that’s that’s usually very well managed. But you can also have a close loop. In other words, thinking of KYC potentially, you could have just a bank using this technology for just its customers and not the whole world. Let’s say, you know, in theory, so there’s that definite possibility that so I still like to think in terms of the underlying technology, there’s the possibility and the potential for it to still be very powerful, when it comes to KYC.

Craig Jeffery  04:47

That makes a lot of sense. And as we get into where’s the value of blockchain and KYC, I did just have a couple, a couple thoughts came to mind as you were describing that and but definitely. Is good. I mean, it’s fairly complex technology that can be understood in a reasonable manner. I was thinking how people used to transmit data in the past, it was you would have a leased line. There would be a physical line that ran through, let’s say, the telecom company, point to point maybe you’re communicating with your bank, and so you pay for a line. It’s a point to point line. Well, our phone systems have long been you call, and it routes it in different ways. And then many, many years ago, the Internet came about, and that you would send, you send an email, or you send a file and it over the internet, and it has all these packets, and those packets may travel different paths, so it becomes more decentralized in terms of the journey. So that’s true with our tech. And then this authority, the authority is not long no longer it’s sitting at, let’s say, a particular bank or a particular entity. It’s now on all these ledgers. And so we’ve gone to the more distributed methods of communication, more the distributed, you know, the concepts that support distributed ledger technology, right? So democratization of those ledgers. But you know, as you think about the value of blockchain and KYC, what makes that the potential great hope, where’s the value in KYC.

Royston DaCosta  04:55

Without question. And I just want to also add, if you think in terms of beyond KYC, because it’s kind of just as powerful important think payments. And I know you’re already aware that, you know, cryptocurrency uses blockchain as this underlying technology, but let me, let me kind of answer your question regarding the benefits and the value add, particularly with KYC. So mentioned about, you know, obviously, in some ways, the decentralization being kind of distributed network of participants, transparency, all participants have access the same version of that ledger. So thinking initially, maybe your bank and you could, I would imagine, within that same network can limit who sees, because you wouldn’t want your data to be visible. Let’s say to everyone, but you might be happy with it to be visible to some of your vendors or parties that you specifically agree to how to authorize to view that data. I think this is, again, a very powerful benefit. It is security. Data on a blockchain is secured by what they call crypto cryptographic algorithms, and that makes it extremely difficult for an unauthorized party to alter that information without detection. That’s a very key point. There’s also another attribute for blockchain, which they call immutability, which is basically once that data is recorded and confirmed. And this is interesting. I know, with this day and age, no one can say it’s 100% full proof, but it is virtually and that’s much better than what we have today. Frankly, it’s virtually impossible to change, ensuring that the integrity and the permanence of that transaction history still remains. So again, for something like KYC, definitely a leap forward. There’s an element in terms of how blockchain works, that there’s something they call the consensus mechanism, which relies basically on, you know, sort of the various counterparties or parties involved to validate these transactions, that ensures only legitimate transactions are added to the chain. So we’re talking about blockchain, but let’s be clear, we’re, in my mind, we’re looking to solve a problem, and this problem has been KYC, and the reason it’s a problem and has been a problem is because we all are required, banks, corporates, fintechs, to comply to regulation. And you know, depending on the territory you you have to be residing in, that compliance could be quite, quite difficult. Could be quite light. But I think whichever territory you live in, even if it’s supposedly light, one would still say that it’s still quite painful to have to produce documentation. And let’s say we because KYC, in this case, we’re really thinking in terms of banks. If you’re working for a corporate where you have to open a huge number of accounts, or regularly open accounts, then this process is not only painful in terms of the the mechanism that we need to use to get that documentation to the bank, and I’ll address that in a second, but it’s also in terms of the number of times that needs to be done and what’s acceptable by the bank. So what I meant in terms of the mechanism that you might use to get the bank there are some corporates, including ourselves, that can and frankly, at a very basic level, you think of DocuSign, can get digitized documents produced fairly easily, but not all the banks accept that, or not all the banks are prepared to receive that digitized level of communication. So you know, you kind of already up against. A challenge there where you doesn’t matter what technology you might be able to use at your side or your corporate side, you’re limited by what you can share with, in this case, a bank or could be another third party. And this is why I feel like with Blockchain, there’s a there’s an obvious solution in my mind that is just begging to kind of address that issue. I do recognize it’s not something that we can immediately implement, because it still needs to be developed and involved and packaged in a way that makes that the bank satisfied, that they’re comfortable with the controls around it, and we as the corporate, the customer, which is, as always, what we’re looking for, get the value.

Craig Jeffery  04:55

Yeah, it seems like so many banks are trying to reduce the complexity and the the friction in the KYC process. Some, you know, some of them have these portals where you’re you’re loading documents, they’re signing documents, they’re asking for more information. Something gets bumped out. This is one of the elements that you know, is when we do surveys, what are the pain points? You know, you it’s all KYC is so, so high up to the top. Sometimes it’s described more into terms of bank account management. And you know, if that, if that includes KYC, secure email, seems to be falling down. That doesn’t seem to be as high of an issue as it used to be. That was another pain point, right? I’ve got to do these different logins. The emails disappear. This is not so helpful, but KYC has always been a big pain point.

Royston DaCosta  05:41

To your point on emails. I think again, it’s one of those classic cases. And I was at a conference yesterday was so refreshing as whenever you get the chance to go outside your little bubble, let’s say to hear other people talking about this type of challenge. Let’s call it that you know, whether it’s aI blockchain, whatever, it’s interesting for me, like you said, with email, to some degree that potentially has been mitigated fairly naturally by some of the tools that we use. So if you think of teams, that’s quite a secure environment and portal to use for communication internally anyway, and you could use it for external communication, but obviously you need to authorize that individual. But I think with emails, there’s an element now where, you know, banks included, use their portals for exchanging messages, and then they’ll send you an alert by email, which you then have to go into to try and, you know, get the access to that message. So I think in my other words, whereas previously, there may not been an option for accessing secure emails, there is now, but admit you have to go through a couple additional steps to be able to be authorized to access that message. I think the issue with KYC, and I’m going to repeat myself a couple of times, because I think it’s such a like you said, a big pain point is it’s been around for so long. And let’s be clear, I’m not suggesting that KYC is not important. Or, you know, that’s not it’s a good thing. Actually, it is good thing for both us and for our bank so I definitely agree with the requirement for KYC. The issue is when we look at where we are today in society, with terms of technology, and frankly, if you think about if you wanted to open a bank account for yourself, personally. And I know you’re it’s a big difference between a corporate individual, but you can see why people immediately make that comparison. You can do that within two minutes. Two wait five minutes if you’ll kind of stretch it online on your phone at that so there’s an immediate, kind of a question mark. Then whether can be that easy token account in your own name. You know, in terms of the principle, why can’t we have a similar experience? Admittedly, it’s a corporate admittedly, you have to be more stringent, and there’s a lot more regular. Let me go through some of the hurdles. Why don’t I do that now? Just to kind of remind ourselves with this highlight, I guess the reasons why blockchain has been it’s taken longer to implement. And this is something that I got from the from Swift, a document that swift issued a few years ago when they first looked at blockchain. And it’s quite interesting, because they highlighted, highlighted, I think it’s about seven or eight areas which they would, would suggest that for any technology, and I think this does apply to any technology, but in this case, we’re looking really at blockchain to pass, for it to be fully acceptable, certainly to themselves, and I guess in terms of their poor the paper the wider world. So let me, let me just go through those strong governance. It has to have a governance model that clearly defines the roles and responsibilities of the various parties, as well as the business and technical operating rules. And if I were to address that, I would say the nature of blockchain is decentralized. So there you already have a major issue. Who’s going to be governing that? But I. Do believe that in what we’re seeing is a lot, in most cases, where technologies come in and you think, Ah, you can’t do it because that can’t do that. There are people haven’t had chance, and governance for them are having a chance to review what are the mitigating actions that can be acceptable. So in terms of strong governance, I’ll say yes, there isn’t that immediate control, if you like, but it could still be looked at, perhaps from in terms of within, let’s say the UK, could be a bank to start with, within the UK, and then hopefully it builds up from there at some point. And I don’t know how long that’s going to take. It could become a regional network, European banks, maybe European regulation, and we have that bunch of that already for a number of areas, not saying it’s gonna be easy, but I do believe that’s, that’s potentially the way it could progress progress. So that’s just the first point.

Craig Jeffery  15:54

You mentioned Swift, and it made me think of, you know, swift as a as a communications network has, you know, all these banks join, they want to do business with each other. They have a whole structure for being able to share and just turn on other counterparties, so you don’t have to send everything all together. So they’ve, they’ve been doing that. How do we make the ability to trade to communicate effectively? And that also ties into their whole like their example of the closed user group, right? You can be on the SWIFT network a bank. Can also set up something for other banks or for their corporate customers that says, here’s how we operate within this model. So that’s like a microcosm of some of what we’re talking about here. But, but strong governance is number one, what’s what’s the second?

Royston DaCosta  16:39

And just quickly on the point you made about Swift. So, and this is, I’m not, I’ve not been involved in the project they were working on, trying to introduce a solution for KYC. But I would imagine that, you know, they are a much larger group, and they’re talking about 14, 15,000 banks globally. And whereas my example, I was saying, Well, maybe you start off with just one or two banks, or, in fact, just one bank, and then build it up from there. But the second point, data controls, controlling the data access and availability to preserve that data confidentiality. So we discussed that earlier in terms of confidential and GDPR. Then again, this, this is, I think, always been, the age or challenge for not just banks but corporates, compliance with regulatory requirements. And I should have probably, or at least I would add within that local regulatory requirements, because there’s the local reg requirements, in some cases, there’s the international rates requirements, but either way, it’s the same, it’s a challenge. So the ability to comply with that needs to be, needs to be also considered. The fourth point is standardization. Remember, we’re looking at, you know, how this is going to be rolled out, and we think of vast, you know, in some cases, the global landscape, standardization of at all levels to guarantee straight through processing, interoperability and backward compatibility. So this is swift typically, you know, looking at the solution say, you know, we’ve got to think in terms of how we process our traffic, and is this technology going to be able to withstand the requirements of what we’re currently able to offer. So totally get that and not say this is something that’s going to be a solution that we come up with tomorrow, but it’s certainly, I think it’s certainly achievable. The fifth one identity framework, the ability to identify parties involved to ensure accountability and non repudiation of financial transaction. That should be relatively straightforward for swift I would imagine it’s the first thing you would expect as a member of Swift security and cyber defense. Again, very important, the ability to detect, prevent and resist cyber attacks, which are growing in number and sophistication. So again, I would feel given what sift has done in that area, this should be a slam dunk for them. Not saying it’s something you could take you should be Lux or relax about, but it’s something that they’re very good on. They’re very good on cyber and sort of the right level controls. And then I think we’re getting to the parts where perhaps, if you’ve got past the first five, then you’re really kind of putting in the I say, once they ice in the cape. But these are just as important. But perhaps, in my view, not so it shouldn’t be as big a hurdle to overcome reliability, readiness, to support mission critical financial services. I mean, sort of an excellent reputation for that. Whatever they would implement, they’d want to make sure that’s not going to disrupt that, that performance, and the last bit, I think, is the key one in respect of Sony swift and any other FinTech or bank that we’re looking to implement this type of technology, scalability, readiness to scale to support services, your process. Hundreds, if not millions, 1000s of transactions per second. Totally understand why, certainly from a swift perspective, this would be, or is still being worked on, in terms of rolling out a solution for KYC. But what I would say Craig is it’s a good starting point, because you know when you look at these points anyway, and I would say, if I revisit them again, I could, like I did with some of them, I said, say, well, we’ve got that one. We’ve got that one. Okay, this one’s a bit more challenging. But none of those, to me, look like insurmountable. I’m not saying they’re easy to fix, but I don’t think they’re insurmountable. It would take a fair bit of effort by a number of stakeholders. But my approach, and my view generally, with you know, even terms of projects, is not in all cases, but certainly in terms of experience I’ve had, is sometimes it’s better to go for a phased approach, rather than Big Bang, try and get what you know will work in place. I’m not saying rawly. I’d say, Well, I’m talking about sort of like how you test and what have you what have you, and get that working, get making sure it’s kind of, you know, really robust. Then go on to the next stage and say, right, okay, well, that works really well. That’s gone. I’m sure this is all happening, but in in terms of, you know, how I see this evolving, and so I’d like to think, then, what time frame, sooner the better. But I would say maybe the next five years, at least, because technology is evolving so quickly. Because, you know, there’s a possibility that with KYC being around as long as it has, in nature, in the net, in the way that we currently communicate, the banks, who’s to say that whole requirement? I wouldn’t say there’s that requirement of having to produce sort of the relevant regulatory documents, is going to go away, but the nature of KYC goes away. And what I’m probably thinking off there, and this is probably a bit too futuristic, is we are kind of heading slowly by shortly into the digital identification kind of phase. Let’s call it that. Some countries already have that for their kind of citizens. Not all countries use it. I mean, we have, certainly in the UK, I know you probably have the US a digital kind of bar on your passport, but we still have to hold a document, you know, booking our hand to get through at some point, I can see that being completely digital. And if you’re in that sort of space and you’re looking at that, then why can’t all this be completely digitized and eventually doctrine is but it’s ironic that we I’ve been talking about blockchain in a way that sort of, let’s say, helps to supplement the process we have currently, which is kind of still manual, should we say, in terms of getting documents to the bank. So my thinking was okay, so we get this document and then we kind of submit to the bank. Now, ideally that should be in a digital form, but in some cases, there might be a copy that we attach and maybe upload, or sometimes it could be even a hard copy that needs to be signed with wet signatures and, you know, sent to the bank. So those are kind of the backdrop to what I’m talking about. But what I’m saying is all those, and this will come very much, in my view, through regulation, because I think it’s governments that will drive this change that could all go away because governments say, right, interesting enough. I think it’s Estonia have already implemented a blockchain solution for their citizens in terms of the national in their health service. So, and this is not this year. This is like, I think three or four years ago. So it’s been done. And I think that’s the other point. I wanted to bring to your attention yourself and your listeners, is that when you hear of these and okay, I immediately thought about this, and I thought the immediate argument would be, well, Estonia is a very small country. With all respect to Estonia, you couldn’t necessarily just say, Oh, well, we’ll do that in the US, or we’ll do that in the UK. Understood, understood, but the fact that it has worked, and admittedly, it’s working a smaller population or demographic, should give us hope.

Craig Jeffery  24:05

That’s a good point. You know, the whole the whole authority for IDs or digital awareness, what’s done at the national level, what’s done at a subdivision level, or smaller than that, the US, states or provinces in Canada, you know, and then there might even be others jurisdiction. So all those items make sense. Let me, let me ask another question. Royston on this, I recently reviewed technology predictions I made about eight years ago. I was going through them the first couple I was like, Oh, I was spot on. And then there were some I was like, then I was like, someone’s like, okay, that’s not right. And then one on, on bank account management. I was mentioning how, within 10 years, I thought it would would come to play, because when bank account management came up, I’m sorry, EBM electronic bank account management, this idea of conversations and files that could be shared over Swift or through communications, right? There’s all these conversations to say. I. To set up an account. Here’s a new signer, and it all goes digitally. People in companies were like, this would be great, because the process is terrible. And the banks were like, this would be great, the process is terrible. And so the bank set up things on the back end to handle it. And then all the corporations are like, all our bank account stuff, many of the corporations, all our bank account, stuff is in paper files or in different spreadsheets. We don’t have systems now, a bit has changed, right? It’s the readiness for the tech requires a certain things to be in place, just like your rideshare app. Well, your rideshare app doesn’t work. If there’s not the internet, there’s not geolocation or GPS activity, or the ability to make payments. So all those things came together so that you could, you know, see where the driver is, make payment on it, rate things, all those things can happen. It came through because, you know, phones were there. There’s the wireless network. All those things happen. EPM was too early, right? Corporations weren’t ready on the back end. So I don’t think my prediction for how much it would be adopted in two years is going to come true there, but more things are coming together now. Would you say on the tech side? I mean, you mentioned maybe five years. What’s your prediction for, or your outlook? Maybe, if that sounds too much, your outlook for, if it’s the great hope, when will that hope be partially realized and then fully realized?

Royston DaCosta  26:25

That’s a tough question, because I want to say, in my kind of most optimistic view, is that we’ve already got it. It is out there. But how useful? How good is that to let’s say you or me, where we are not physically be able to use it with our particular bank. So the challenge comes in, and I’m thinking in terms of the term. The gist of your question is, when is it going to be widely available? So we’re not even talking about it as a pain point anymore, which is like sometimes you talk about banking platforms. What does your banking platform do? I’m sure that most banking platforms are able to import, let’s say, a file from your ERP solution. If your banking platform can’t do that, then that’s really bad. That’s poor. But you might then say, oh, but my bank does it so much easier, because it’s just, you know, this interface works, or an API and so on so forth. And you can have different levels. So in terms of trying to answer a question. I want to say that I’m I don’t know this for sure, so that’s my bad, but I’m almost confident as a bank out there that’s already doing this, but it’s perhaps not one of the larger international banks. If I’m thinking in terms of what would make more sense is when it’s more widely available, at least you got two or three. Certainly, large international banks, they’re offering this. I don’t see any reason again, why it shouldn’t be available within five years. And it sounds aggressive, and I’ll tell you one of the reasons why I’ve had that confidence and before, if you’d asked me this question, 10 years ago, I’d been a lot less confident about some of these technologies being able to be developed and scale up. It’s a cliche, but it’s a fact as well, which is the world is moving at such an exponential pace that everything we talk about is outdated, literally, if not within the same 10 and expand in small bits, smaller sort of first part, but it is so first of all, I would say, with the way that we’ve got a changing demographic in the workplace, and ironically, it’s the same period, I believe, in the next five years, the current generation that are officially due to retire by the year 2030, will have retired, or will have left the workplace. Some have already left as a result of the pandemic. So point behind that is you’ve got a younger average workforce who have high expectations, and I said higher, not high but, but also are more familiar with technology than, say, my generation work. So there’s an element there where, you know, some of the FinTech banks that are coming up with very innovative solutions using generative AI, are pushing and pushing that whole agenda so that these, let’s say, the more traditional banks, cannot, in my view, afford to ignore what’s happening around them and what’s being asked off them by corporate. I know we’re not talking about this per se, but interesting enough payments, which I did mention to earlier, is also a prime candidate for blockchain technology for this, almost identical reasons, slightly different pain points transparency. Still do not have transparency for payments today, no matter what you tell me, I’ve heard, and I’ve experienced very recently, a payment where is it going astray? We knew exactly where it was, but we couldn’t get it back for over it was six. Six days, and one treasurer said to me, it was a large amount that he couldn’t get back for two weeks, and the banks involved had absolutely no control in what we’ve been told in getting that payment back to us immediately. So blockchain, there’s no question that would happen. It can’t, because you’ve got that digital trail, and it’s all instant. And I know some of the banks already have their own solutions using Blockchain, like JP Morgan and onyx, but you know, five years, I bet you, we talk next year, and I’ll be thinking, Oh, maybe I should have three years. But no, seriously, this has gone on for so long, just as much as cash flow forecasting, and that’s another pain point which is not really an issue with the banks, but it’s certainly a pain point that treasurers have been faced for so long is now a lot more tangible. And why is that? Primarily, in my view, because of AI. AI is democratized, the ability for us to get over some of the hurdles internally in trying to connect systems together, and also APIs obviously fall into that bracket. But these are just examples of why I believe that for blockchain five years, I would imagine, I would expect, there to be a solution that’s much more widely available than just, say, the one bank.

Craig Jeffery  31:17

I think of Yogi Berra you may have heard of Yogi bearisms? I think he’s, I think this is the way he said it. It’s predictions are very difficult, especially about the future, the silliness of that, right? It’s predictions about the past. Of course, would be different. But to your point about the the technology being more in place, the need is there. It’s a key issue. And then, you know, it’s interesting how you talked about, you didn’t use the term digital natives, but the newer entrants of the workforce are, are coming in, impatient not to do things the old way. You know, we used to, we used to print paper on logs and carry it to the bank, you know, while we were fighting, you know, bears, you know, it’s just there’s an intolerance for very manual, very, you know, the older style methods and and that’s having an impact. That’s driving some technology decisions and companies. Because, you know, other people are like, you just got to not be lazy and do that. And they’re like, this is, this is not being lazy. It’s like, why would we do something that’s dumb or sub optimal and that’s pushing a lot? So I think those things together, they come those things come together. The tech is available. There’s more you know, particularly because you can do this through a bank. You may not have to be fully digital on the corporate side, but you could use portals and use that information so that it could be shared more broadly. I think there’s a number of things that that make this more likely. So I, I’m gonna agree with you on the five years. I wouldn’t go with you on the three years. I’m not going to go that far. So maybe we can go back and say there will be some doing it for sure. I mean, just seeing what the bank portals are doing, we’ve we’ve used those in our staffing roles, and I’m like, they’re getting a lot better, and these are some of the trillion dollar banks. And so as this framework becomes possible, that should be really good. I really like your comments. Royson, the great hope for KYC is blockchain. I think that’s true. I think I’m more convinced that it’s true. Thank you so much.

Royston DaCosta  33:18

No, you’re welcome. And just to one of a couple of things in terms of examples today, and I sort of just wanted to add those at the end, two areas that already use blockchain technology. So this, this is an area where they’re not thinking about it. There’s not a kind of proof of concept that’s being discussed. It’s happening. Smart contracts, personal identity, security. I know it’s a whole different we could argue ballgame. But to me, quite often, when you know people use these, let’s say, call the main reasons, I think excuses. I don’t think it’s acceptable in the sense that, like I said before, if Estonia is using Blockchain already for the purposes they are, then you know, we have an obligation, not just because of that, but generally, to be able to say, Well, why shouldn’t we consider and try and pursue this? Because at the end day, what were we trying to do? I’m always a big believer in we’re not looking for a solution that hasn’t got a problem. We’re looking for a solution that is going to address this problem. Otherwise, why wouldn’t we be talking about it, and it, in many respects, will help, I think, with other areas of the business. Because if it can be applied to this area with banks, surely we can apply to other areas for regulation. Surely, I mean, that’s the way the wider benefits. And again, like all of these things that I know we haven’t had time to do to look at this specifically, but I quite often, when I do some of my presentations, I’m reminded of some of the films Hollywood released, which go back 30 to 40 years, that showcase technology that we’re any we’re still thinking about today. So it’s our it’s quite ironic in some way. Then. One speaks to my disclosure with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore back in the 90s, and they were talking about augmented reality and holographic imaging. And it’s fascinating that I know Citibank hollow, which is their product that they use for trading, is almost identical to what this technology that was showcased in this, in this film 30 years ago, actually, 30 Yeah. So I mean, again, thinking about talking about being creative, and talking about where the future is. It’s not new. In my view, this is not new. What’s new is working in in the world we’ve worked in Treasury, like you said, been used to working with paper in the past, but now looking at the potentials and the potential benefits and efficiencies that we can gain from some of these technologies. But yeah, we can. We can only keep trying, I guess, with what I’d say,

Craig Jeffery  36:01

Thank you so much. Royston,

Announcer  36:07

You’ve reached the end of another episode of the Treasury Update Podcast. Be sure to follow Strategic Treasurer on LinkedIn. Just search for Strategic Treasurer. This podcast is provided for informational purposes only, and statements made by Strategic Treasurer LLC on this podcast are not intended as legal, business, consulting, or tax advice. For more information, visit and bookmark StrategicTreasurer.com.