BBVA has issued the first green bond using blockchain

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Spanish banking giant BBVA issued a €35 million ($40 million) structured green bond for insurance group Mapfre using blockchain technology, per a press release.

BBVA said this was the first blockchain-supported green bond issue, with the technology being used to negotiate the terms. The returns of structured bonds are linked to the performance of an underlying asset or index. In this instance, Mapfre chose a "six year term bond linked to the evolution of the five year euro swap rate."  

The banking giant said that this transaction underpins its commitment to new technologies and sustainable financing. The issued bond was categorized as green, following an eligibility assessment performed by registrar and classification society DVN GL, while it's also high-tech as its terms and conditions were negotiated on the bank's own blockchain platform.

BBVA explained that its platform offers advantages such as working for both simple and complex products, allowing faster issuing times and ensuring documentations are traceable and immutable. Further, it offers customers significant flexibility in designing a bond that meets their needs.

This isn't the first transaction on BBVA's internally developed blockchain platform, and other banks are also increasingly presenting use cases for the technology. In December 2018, BBVA facilitated a $150 million loan for Porsche and signed a synthetic loan securitization with European Investment Bank Group (EIB) - both on the banking giant's blockchain platform. 

Of note, Spanish peer Santander striked a $700 million deal with IBM last week to use its technologies, including blockchain. And other banks have been increasingly active in this space: HSBC announced earlier this year that it settled $250 billion in forex trades on blockchain in 2018, and JPMorgan unveiled its digital token aimed at transforming its massive wholesale payments business last week.

With the financial services industry spending over $1.7 billion a year on the distributed ledger technology, per Greenwich Associates, it's good to see more financial institutions (FIs) rolling out blockchain projects and demonstrating a number of successful applications that help them achieve efficiencies in terms of costs and time.