ING has invested in securities lending platform HQLAx, which went live in December 2019. The bank’s blockchain team developed the initial version of the HQLAx application, which uses blockchain to facilitate efficient and high-speed trading of high quality liquid assets (HQLA).

“The successful commercial launch of HQLAx is a big milestone for the implementation of blockchain in the securities lending market and proof that blockchain can bring tangible benefits to the industry,” said Mariana Gomez de la Villa, head of ING’s blockchain team. “It’s rewarding to see that a project we’ve been working on for years, is now live.”

ING and HQLAx partnered in 2018 to carry out the first ever live securities trade on a blockchain platform. Together with Credit Suisse, ING swapped €25m worth of high quality liquid assets using the collateral lending application of HQLAx on R3’s Corda distributed ledger platform.