What is your view on the impact that DLT and Blockchain is having in reshaping asset and wealth management? What is the current state of the space and how do you foresee it moving forward?
It is a major change that cannot be ignored, and it will affect every segment of the financial industry and our everyday lives. It will affect payments, decentralized finance, tokenization of real assets, archiving, real estate transactions, international trade, copyright management, etc.

For wealth management in particular it will enable democratization of illiquid products that were difficult to access e.g.: private equity, real estate, luxury collectables, art, etc.

Indeed, cryptocurrencies are a mere tip of the iceberg if you consider the potential of tokenization of real estate and the capital of SMEs. Therefore, we need to see national laws being adapted to recognize the validity of a token as a proof of property, institutional custody solutions and marketplaces where the tokens can be sold and bought. In Switzerland, the legal framework already exists, tokenization is converging towards standardization (CMTA) and regulated marketplaces have been created.

Thanks to our strategic partnership with Taurus, we have developed this value chain from tokenization to custody to marketplace.

Another major disruptor is Decentralized Finance, where the democratization of financial products in terms of access and costs is taken to another level. However, for institutionals and HNWI, a major block is the lack of regulations (mainly AML). We are exploring permissioned pools, but we can imagine in the future an AI-driven AML tool incorporated in the protocol.

Our vision is that digital and legacy finance will converge strongly, and we will have strong interconnection between real and Digital Assets. An accelerator would be a regulated stablecoin or a major central bank digital currency, that would allow seamless transactions on the Blockchain, bridging the two worlds.

What solutions does your company offer that asset and wealth management firms should consider?
The cornerstone of our offering is in the custodial service we provide, as a bank this is the normal place for us to start with. We have created a seamless experience for our clients. They don’t need to worry about the intrinsic complexities behind the Blockchain technology being used as all their investments are consolidated into the core banking system. Once we started with custody we were able to get into the brokerage and trading, and now an asset management offering.

Today we offer the following services:

• Custody of BTC, ETH and all ERC20 tokens, Tezos, Polkadot.
• Trading of BTC, ETH, Link, Matic, Aave, Uniswap, Curve, Compound, GRT, Synthetix, Yearn Finance, Tezos, Polkadot, Fantom.
• Staking: Tezos.
• Lending against BTC and ETH.
• Tokenization and access to TDX (marketplace).
• Bespoke discretionary management mandate.
• Active blog and newsletter combining on-chain analytics and technical analysis and education material.

Work in progress:

• OTC BTC secured lending of USD or USDC.
• Permissioned pool DeFi.
• Custody Fantom (native token), Solana.
• Staking of Polkadot, Fantom, Solana, some ERC20 tokens.
• AMC on cryptos including staking and yield products.

This article is from The Wealth Mosaic's WealthTech Views Report: DLT & Blockchain 2022. Access the full report here