Former Circle Exec Joins Royal Bank Of Scotland To Front Fintech Project

According to a report by the Financial Times, an ex-executive from the cryptocurrency finance firm Circle has just been hired by the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Marieke Flament formerly worked as the European managing director at Circle and will be joining the massive team at the Royal Bank as CEO of Mettle - the digital service for small/medium sized enterprises.

The digital service has allegedly been around since the start of November last year with the bank hoping to roll out a standalone version of the service in August. Flament commented on the potential for financial disruption in the SME sector with Mettle, saying:

“There is a huge opportunity for disruption in SME digital banking. Insight and feedback garnered during the pilot stage have shown that we are in a very strong position to capitalize on this opportunity through Mettle.”

Real Estate

Rumours surfaced earlier this year, that the Scottish bank joined a trial program in April that used blockchain technology to help smooth out the payments for real estate, making them quicker and just all-around more efficient. The trial reportedly used a tool from startup Instant Property Network (IPN), to slash the costs and offer more transparency in property acquisitions. This is allegedly going to be based on R2’s open-source platform, Corda.

One of the heads of group innovation at another banking giant, Barclays, John Stecher commented on the current un-streamlined process of buying a house as he says:

“When a person wants to purchase a house, the process encompasses a whole host of different interactions with different businesses and governmental entities that can be uncomfortable and drawn out.”

In joining real-estate and blockchain together, there is the potential to result in savings of around $160 billion, according to IPN.

The director for mortgage innovation at the royal bank, Dan Salmon spoke to Bloomberg and said:

“We are near the end of the hype cycle and have not found a great consumer solution for distributed ledger technology until now… Property is an industry that is ripe for this, where a complex difficult process for customers could be made cheaper and more transparent.’’