Two new IBM studies revealed that banks and financial market leaders are concentrating on blockchain in order to create new business models and anticipate disruption.

According to the official release, the new IBM study titled “Leading the Pack in Blockchain Banking: Trailblazers Set the Pace” is compiled based on the survey of 200 global banks. The second study titled “Blockchain Rewires Financial Markets: Trailblazers Take the Lead” is compiled based on a survey of 200 global financial markets institutions. According to the studies, 15% of banks and 14% of financial markets institutions intend to apply full-scale, commercial blockchain solutions in 2017. 65% of banks expect to have blockchain solutions in its production in next three years.

“There are many advantages to being an early adopter of blockchain technology. To start, first movers are setting business standards and creating new models that will be used by future adopters of blockchain technology. We're also finding that these early adopters are better able to anticipate disruption, fighting off new competitors along the way," Likhit Wagle, Global Industry General Manager, IBM Banking and Financial Markets said.

The banking study was conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) and showed that over 70% of trailblazers or early-adopters surveyed are prioritizing the distributed ledger efforts to break down current barriers in creating new business models. In the case of financial market institutions, 7 out of 10 are focusing on the distributed ledger efforts on areas of wholesale payments, clearing and settlement, equity and debt insurance and reference data.

Trailblazers are expecting the blockchain to impact on various business areas including 83% in reference data, 80% in retail payments and 79% in consumer lending. 80% of banks surveyed identified trade finance, corporate lending and reference data as having the greatest potential in blockchain.

IBM is heading towards advancing blockchain technology in order to remove complexity and make it more accessible and open. Developers have the opportunity to develop applications while testing security, availability and performance of a permissioned blockchain network, through IBM’s open source contributions to the Hyperledger Fabric and its blockchain services on IBM Bluemix.