German fintech company Finoa has launched a banking-grade custody service aimed at institutional investors in digital assets.
According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), by 2027 around 10 per cent of the world’s GDP will be transacted and stored on blockchain, which represents a USD24 trillion opportunity window for the digital asset space. Finoa believes this will be one of the biggest disruptions for the financial sector in recent decades, as it will boost asset-liquidity and market efficiencies.
However, safeguarding digital assets (and the cryptographic keys, inherent in this technology) remains a daunting task for many institutional investors, who often rely on sub- optimal third-party providers, due to the scarcity of enterprise-ready solutions. Some of those providers include unaudited providers, keeping the cryptographic keys online in so-called “Hot-Storage”. This translates into a higher risk of asset jeopardy. To mitigate some of the risks, some providers offer so-called “Deep-Cold-Storage”, which involves taking the cryptographic keys and storing it offline in eg bunkers in the Swiss alps.
“Cold-storage custody providers are killing the ‘digital’ in digital assets – it is anything but disruptive,” says Finoa co-founder Henrik Gebbing.
Finoa has created a warm-storage custody solution, bringing together the accessibility of hot-storage- with the Security of cold-storage-solutions – all of it built over state-of-the-art banking standards.
Finoa’s Custody provides a seamless interface that improves the client ́s safeguarding and control of their Digital Asset portfolio: a fully Mobile and Digital application built on high- security banking technology.
Maximum security and compliance are guaranteed by combining a blockchain-adapted core banking system with the “gold-standard” of hardware security modules (HSMs), designed and manufactured in Germany. Real-time asset access is provided through a combination of an online-banking-interface and a smartphone-managed control mechanism – ensuring full user-friendliness.
Finoa ́s custody solution represents the kick-start of Finoa’s product portfolio in the Digital Asset space, but they plan to continue disrupting the financial services industry by enriching their product portfolio through the exploration of further financial services, such as prime brokerage, tokenisation services or investment services/wealth management.
Finoa is a German-based Startup, founded by a team of banking technology and cyber security experts, FinTech-entrepreneurs, financial services professional and former strategy consultants.
In April 2019, Finoa was officially chosen to be part of “Open Future” accelerator, a highly- selective Startup program run by Télefonica SA, who is the second biggest telecommunication company in Europe with annual revenues of more than EUR50 billion.
“We believe in a future where the majority of financial assets will be natively digital, tokenised, and represented on the blockchain. Our mission is to serve those institutional investors that share the same vision, beginning with a banking-grade platform servicing Digital Assets,” says Christopher May, Co-Founder Finoa.
