Swisscom Blockchain AG, a joint venture between ex Ernst & Young executives and Swisscom, the Swiss communications giant, have launched their new Digital Asset Custody solution into the global Financial Institution market place.
Mark Lally (pictured), Principal Advisor with Swisscom Blockchain, explains: “We offer key products and services across three specific areas: Firstly, the Enterprise Blockchain business unit delivers consulting services and project implementation expertise to existing businesses.
“Secondly, our Tokenisation Services unit focuses on asset tokenisation where real world assets get tokenised on the blockchain. This also includes fund raising ICO’s for established or start-up businesses where we act as the technology and expertise provider to help execute a successful ICO.
“Thirdly, our Blockchain as a Service business unit focuses primarily on the development and delivery of our Digital Asset Custody solution which is aimed at financial institutions of all sizes who wish to offer digital asset custodial services to their clients.”
Lally explains: “We started off understanding the business needs and concerns of financial institutions from big global retail banks down to small private banks or family offices that want to enter into the digital asset custody space. Right now, our prime target clients are those who have done the research into blockchain based digital assets and have arrived at the point where they want to gain exposure to this new asset class. On top of securely holding the assets they also want the ability to move/trade these assets at any given moment.
“We offer an off-the-shelf solution that allows these financial institutions to achieve exactly that. The solution consists of three core components. A vaulting hardware which securely stores the digital asset private keys, a web based UI dashboard and a backend Relay Service to facilitate safe and secure movement of the stored assets when required. It can be fully integrated into existing core banking infrastructure if required.
“Clients vary and range from start-up crypto funds, Wealth Managers, Family Offices, Private Banks all the way up to multinational retail banks. What we are witnessing on the market right now is savvy end clients of these financial institutions have done their research over the past number of years and have arrived at the point where they want a percentage of their investable portfolio to have blockchain digital asset exposure.
“However, they want their trusted bank to take care of this for them. They want a percentage of their portfolios invested in this space but don’t want the hassle of learning how to do this safely themselves.
“We have invested heavily in the development of our Digital Asset Custody solution and expect to see exponential global growth from early 2019 onwards,” Lally says. “The digital asset custody market is currently in its infancy. Interested clients are currently investigating potential market offerings which matches their respective needs and are waiting for the regulatory landscape to become clearer before they ‘pull the trigger’ on a custody storage solution for their business operations.
“Every single financial institution that manages portfolios on behalf of clients will have digital assets exposure to some degree in the near future. We predict that it will form a core offering of all financial institutions within the next 5-10 years. Swisscom Blockchain is here now to help such institutions compete for this new business revenue.” n
