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Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York:

Northern Trust has launched the first commercial deployment of blockchain technology for private equity fund administration. The firm is partnering with IBM for technology development, which works off of the Hyperledger Fabric. Hyperledger is an open-source blockchain development platform that is focused on finding ways to use distributed technology in financial services.

Northern Trust started working with $20 billion Swiss asset manager Unigestion, in 2016, to create the blockchain offering for its private equity business. The blockchain platform has been designed to support compliance with current, local regulations. Northern Trust will also make use of IBM's high-security network for blockchain to ensure that private keys and platform security are constantly maintained.

"One of the main challenges for private equity is certifying documents. Paper is being passed around for capital calls, investments, and other transfers. Blockchain provides an immutable, certified record of which documents are current and approved," explains Peter Cherecwich, President of Corporate & Institutional Services, Northern Trust in an interview with Opalesque.

According to Cherecwich, using blockchain will allow funds to have "one version of the truth" which will ultimately be able to cut down the time from fund launch to capital deployment. Unlike traditional document management systems which are often files of PDFs, distributed ledger ......................

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