Relational Contracting Part I: MUFG Experiments with Blockchains

“One of the best meetings ever!”

This is a comment I hear a lot at the conclusion of every one of our SCRC meetings the past few years.  Either we are getting better and better at bringing in some of the top speakers on the supply chain circuit, or people’s standards are declining.  I doubt it’s the latter…

This year was no exception.  We brought in a superb group of experts who came in to speak on the subject of “Relational Contracting in an Uncertain Ecosystem”.  The first of these was Joseph Martinez, Chief Procurement Officer of MUFG (Mitsubishi Bank).  MUFG is a 350 year old bank, and as such operates in a  very legalistic contractual framework.  Joseph is trying to bring it up to speed with recent technology investments and is buying into building a FINTECH capability.  For instance, they are investing block chain to use a distributed ledger for products and services.  Why?  Durability, reliability, and longevity – and to build a trusted exchange between partners.

MUFG is also deploying blockchain in collaboration with the Bank of Japan, using the MUFG coin, which will enable people to use it from their smart phones.  The idea is that people can exchange coins within their our own organization using internal corporate smart coins – and tie them to smart digital contracts. Joseph noted that “I want front to back transparency  in our financial supply chain to reduce costs for my shareholder.  Sometimes we will hit dry wells as we explore new technologoies and not have the returns we were expecting – but these will help us view how we become more competitive.  ”

Finally, he unveiled ten key predictions for the Bank of the Future:

• Banks will revolve around customer choices.
• Banks will be on mobile phones.
• There will be robot advisors that stop you from making unsound financial choices.
• Powerful algorithms will monitor the behavior of a bank’s data to identify external and insider ecurity threats.
• Banks will become identify brokers, analyzing and using the information they know about their clients and give them insight over to customers or other vendors.
• Banks will be replaced by platforms that are run almost entirely by algorithms and robots.
• The bank account of the future will be bankagnostic – an open ecosystem where you manage all of your current and future financial needs.
• Blockcnain will be widely used to distribute, verify and record a wide range of financial services, making them more decentralized.
• Social trading will become widespread, with landing, borrowing and trading on social network platforms.
• Decentralized and crowdsourced loans, mortgages and risk management will become the norm.

These were exciting predictions indeed.  Thanks Joseph for sharing your thoughts!