EXCLUSIVE— Consulting and technology services provider Synechron announced today that it has teamed up with blockchain consortium R3 to create a solution using distributed ledger technology (DLT) for digital identities for customers of corporate banks.

The project is named LEIA 2 and includes 12 banks across four continents. The solution will be built using Corda, R3’s open-source, financial-grade distributed ledger.

“The intention is to use DLT to solve the identity challenge where customers don’t know where their data is stored and how it’s distributed,” Tim Coates, managing consultant at Synechron and co-leader of the project, told Bank Innovation.

The solution aims to solve any problems in Know Your Customer (KYC) processes associated with data (data collection, data validation, customer experience and data privacy) by using R3’s Corda is to provide a trusted platform, which according to Coates, is designed to specifically handle identity as it pertains to the financial services industry. DLT has inherent features that lets it address KYC requirements for validated, trusted data without the risk of tampering or fraud. The product would fit in the existing framework of a bank’s in-house and external data provider, according to the announcement.

The product will serve customers by allowing them to control their data and will benefit banks by reducing  costs related to the KYC processes.

“Increasingly we are seeing across the world, that there is this effort to give customers the power to control their data, and how it’s distributed,” he said.

Coates said that new solutions aims to do for digital identity what “blockchain did for cryptocurrency,” which is to provide a self-sovereign, secure manner to control the distribution of their own identity data.

Many of the specifics regarding the exact workings of the solution are yet to be determined. Those details along with the names of the 12 bank partners, will be revealed when the project is completed in the next couple of months. Upon its completion, Synechron will demo the solution in their Financial Innovation Labs.

Based in New York, Synechron has 18 offices globally, with over 8,000 employees and about $500 million in annual revenues.

R3 works with over 80 banks and other financial institutions to develop, its distributed ledger platform Corda. With offices across 9 countries, it recently completed two of the three tranches in a Series A fundraise valued at $107 million.