Blockchain and Financial System: The Impact of Digital Technology on Mortgage Management – An Italian Case Study

The blockchain technology can be considered a technological revolution, which today affects a wide range of areas in both private and business activities. It consists of a ledger that is distributed and shared among users to trace any kind of information related to activities carried out in platforms in a transparent, immutable, secure and encrypted manner. The aim of this work is to highlight how the blockchain technology can contribute to improving the lending-borrowing circuit, recover profitability, and fight against the entrance of new players in the credit market. From a methodological point of view, the analysis has been carried out with a qualitative approach on a case of a large Italian bank exposed with systemic risk. The case study will highlight the effectiveness of applying Blockchain technology to the credit delivery process in terms of recovering profitability and protecting the security of the data used for business decisions. The main contribution of this paper is the systematic analysis of the latest Blockchain banking innovation. Given that the research also includes the case of mortgage loans, the analysis offers strategic insights to predict the progress, as well as a technology development and dissemination pattern, for the case of Blockchain banking.