CACEIS announced the creation of a dedicated Digital Assets business line that also includes expertise from Crédit Agricole CIB. CACEIS is the asset servicing joint venture between Crédit Agricole (69.5%) and Santander, with €8 trillion ($8.7 trillion) in assets under custody and administration. The group’s expertise includes digital asset custody and IT infrastructure design.
However, CACEIS digital asset capability isn’t new. Last year CACEIS started providing digital asset custody with the issuance of the European Investment Bank’s first digital green bond on the so|bond blockchain platform, which was co-developed by Crédit Agricole CIB. It received a digital asset custody license from French regulator AFME around that time and plans to expand it to a Digital Asset Service Provider (DASP) license under MiCAR. For digital asset custody technology, it partnered with Taurus, which also provides a tokenization solution and is backed by CACEIS, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and others.
“CACEIS is the first European asset servicing group to have a business line fully dedicated to digital assets,” said Jean-Pierre Michalowski, CEO of CACEIS. “We are delighted to be able to provide support for our clients by leveraging our expertise in asset servicing and digital innovation, along with our financial stability, to play a key role as a trusted third party operating within a highly secure environment.”
The company emphasized that beyond custody, the new business line also provides tokenization issuance services and fund distribution services.
Meanwhile, Crédit Agricole CIB developed the so|bond tokenization solution with Sweden’s SEB. It is a public permissioned blockchain that incentivizes running nodes in an energy-efficient manner. As a companion to the bond issuance platform, it also developed so|cash for on-chain settlement.
