Regtech ALT/AVE is leveraging Hedera Hashgraph to target paper waste within the financial services industry. According to a note from the company, their new service docStribute has been launched to distribute mandatory, regulated documents to customers, offering an alternative to sending documents to customers via post. ALT/AVE says that the financial services sector distributes approximately 5.2 billion pieces of paper at a cost of £1.7 billion a year or the equivalent to 2.4 million trees.
docStribute uses Hedera’s distributed ledger technology (DLT) to help institutions meet the legal requirements set out by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) without having to resort to sending printed documents via post. When a financial institution sends a document to a customer using docStribute, the asset is run through an advanced algorithm which then generates an immutable hyperlink that can be embedded in an email to the customer with a call to action. Once checks are completed within the client application, the document “unlocks” and customers are then able to view the document.
Christopher Ansara, founder and CEO at ALT/AVE, explains that for some time there has been a heightened awareness around sustainability within the financial industry and the acceleration of digitisation throughout 2020 and into 2021 has pushed more and more businesses to streamline their practices.
“Working with Hedera, we have been able to produce a solution that has both sustainability and productivity at its heart, and we hope to see our solution help to not only reduce the use of paper, but also help organisations become more sustainable, assisting the UK in reaching its decarbonisation targets of net zero by 2050, and help businesses in the financial sector streamline working practices while ensuring regulatory requirements are being met.”
Christian Hasker, CMO at Hedera says the ALT/AVE project is a perfect use-case of how distributed ledger technology can change the world.