Last week Korea’s Hana Securities announced it selected INF Consulting as technology partner for its security token offering (STO) platform. It plans to launch it in the second half of 2024.
In an announcement, the company said its offering will cover both issuance and distribution. The company confirmed it is still active in the Next Finance Initiative (NFI) consortium with Mirae Asset Securities and SK Telecom to help to promote an STO or digital securities market.
There’s considerable activity around the STO space in Korea. In September KB, NH and Shinhan Securities formed a digital securities consortium, hoping to share costs and use a common platform. This should reduce fragmentation. Some of the larger international banks have created their own plaforms, which need to be interoperable with others. That’s something that’s still a work in progress.
In other jurisdictions there’s often a focus on institutional investors and there are cautious steps with public blockchain. In contrast, a significant proportion of the Korea’s focus is on retail investors and public blockchain. Additionally, the emphasis in Korea is less about tokenizing conventional types of securities but instead, art and real world assets (RWA). So it’s more of an alternative asset management focus.
