Today Swiss digital asset bank SEBA said it received a license from the Swiss Financial Market Authority (FINMA) to act as a custodian bank for Swiss collective investment schemes.
“Two years ago SEBA Bank received a Swiss banking and securities firm licence and is now enjoying excellent business momentum as institutional adoption of crypto & digital assets accelerates globally,” said Guido Buehler, CEO of SEBA Bank.
“With our new CISA licence, SEBA Bank continues its pioneering role in the institutional digital asset space. Asset Managers can now offer strategies based on crypto or other digital asset underlyings to a broader audience utilizing Swiss-based mutual fund structures secured by SEBA Bank as the CISA-licensed custodian.”
One of SEBA’s early investors and clients is major private bank, Julius Baer. SEBA is one of two high profile Swiss digital asset banks, the other being Sygnum.
SEBA has benefited from the latest cryptocurrency boom, but its growth path has not been smooth. Former Chairman Andreas Amschwand, who was a Julius Baer director, departed in July 2020. Last week the bank announced more significant departures, including its CFO David Matter who joined the company in late 2019, and Philipp Baretta, Head of Client and Investment Solutions. This follows the exit of in the second half of 2020 of its COO, CTO, head of custody and head of asset management.
Meanwhile, SEBA has been actively engaging in central bank digital currency (CBDC) trials. It created one of eight consortiums for Banque de France wholesale digital euro tests. These involved using a CBDC for TARGET2-Securities (T2S), enabling delivery versus payment for securities transactions.
It’s also part of one of the teams that made it to the Singapore Global CBDC Challenge finals in conjunction with Xfers.
