Chainlink Collaboration with 24 Financial Institutions Aims to Streamline Corporate Actions Processing

Financial Institutions Advance Blockchain and AI Integration for Corporate Actions

A significant industry initiative led by Chainlink, involving 24 prominent financial institutions and market infrastructures, has unveiled the results of a pilot program aimed at standardizing and streamlining corporate actions processing. This collaborative effort leverages blockchain technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to address a long-standing pain point estimated to cost the global financial industry $58 billion annually. The participating entities include market infrastructures such as SWIFT, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), and Euroclear, alongside leading asset managers and banks including UBS, DBS Bank, and BNP Paribas' Securities Services business.

Detailing the Collaborative Solution

The initiative focused on transforming the historically fragmented and error-prone process of corporate actions—such as dividends, stock splits, and mergers. The Chainlink oracle platform was utilized to extract and validate structured corporate actions data from unstructured announcements, even across multiple languages. This data was then transformed into ISO 20022-compliant messages and transmitted to the SWIFT Network. In parallel, Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) distributed these verified records to various blockchain ecosystems, including DTCC's private network and other public/private environments.

A key component of this solution is the integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) from leading AI providers, including OpenAI's GPT series, Google's Gemini series, and Anthropic's Claude series. These LLMs were instrumental in extracting structured data from diverse and often multilingual corporate action announcements. The Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE) orchestrated the validation of outputs from these multiple AI models, achieving a near 100% data consensus across all evaluated corporate actions during testing. This process culminates in the creation of a "unified golden record"—a single, attested, real-time source of truth for corporate actions.

Market Reaction and Efficiency Gains

The successful pilot project signals a positive outlook for the adoption of blockchain and AI within traditional finance, particularly for improving operational efficiency. The current state of corporate actions processing is characterized by high costs, increasing at an estimated 10% year-over-year, with automation rates falling below 40%. According to Citi's 2025 Asset Servicing report, the average corporate action event now involves over 110,000 firm interactions and costs $34 million to process, with 75% of market participants still relying on manual data revalidation.

The demonstrated ability to deliver structured and validated corporate actions data into existing systems in minutes rather than days represents a substantial leap forward. This efficiency gain is expected to lead to fewer settlement errors, faster reconciliations, and a significant reduction in operational risk and costs for financial institutions. The validation of Chainlink's infrastructure in this enterprise-grade application could bolster investor confidence in the broader decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem's ability to integrate with traditional financial markets.

Broader Context and Future Implications

This initiative marks a critical step towards modernizing the foundational layers of global capital markets. The concept of a "unified golden record" for corporate actions not only addresses immediate processing inefficiencies but also lays crucial groundwork for the future of tokenized assets. By enabling tokenized equities to reference the same confirmed records across various blockchain environments, the project fosters better synchronization and increased automation across onchain markets.

The move by these major financial players into advanced blockchain and AI solutions aligns with a broader industry trend of embracing distributed ledger technology (DLT) for enhanced transparency, programmability, and operational efficiency. Experts have highlighted DLT's potential to improve asset servicing and lifecycle management, automating processes like coupon payments and corporate actions via smart contracts. As McKinsey predicts stablecoin usage to soar, the underlying infrastructure for programmable money and tokenized assets becomes increasingly vital. This collaboration showcases how DLT is evolving from an experimental phase into a fundamental layer for future financial operations.

Looking Ahead

Future developments stemming from this initiative will focus on expanding the workflow to support more complex corporate actions, broadening global coverage to include additional jurisdictions and currencies, and enhancing privacy and governance controls. The successful integration of AI and blockchain by a consortium of this magnitude suggests a growing acceptance and demand for advanced technological solutions to entrenched financial challenges. This trajectory indicates a continued move towards greater automation, reduced friction, and increased resilience within global capital markets, potentially unlocking new efficiencies and revenue streams for participating institutions and the wider financial ecosystem.