Real-World Asset Tokenization Done in Switzerland

Asset tokenization, is the space where traditional assets and digital tokens intercept to allow issuers to build completely new financial products and investors to participate in new ways.

Even if there’s still some way to go, there has been a lot of progress made in the digital asset space to enable tokenization of real-world assets. Testament to this is also the recent announcement from SEBA, a Swiss regulated banking entity.

Founded with a mission to bring closer traditional finance and digital assets, the digital bank has now signalled that it’s entering the asset tokenization space. In this regard SEBA aims to develop innovative solutions where their clients can issue and manage financial assets on multiple blockchain protocols and make these easily accessible to investors.

The digital bank is no stranger to digital assets, as it already offers a suite of services around these, from digital custody to trading, transaction banking as well as crypto-collateralized lending.

SEBA as a regulated entity, follows a fully compliant path in order to target large institutions.

The Swiss financial institution wants to work with banks, professional investors, family offices, asset managers and other blockchain companies.As such, the bank’s entrance in the space is accompanied by a partnership with Digital Asset Shared Ledger (DASL) which is built on the enterprise blockchain Corda.

SEBA Partnering with Liquidity Network DASL

The bank will leverage the Digital Asset Shared Ledger (DASL) to expand its services which is a liquidity network for digital assets. DASL facilitates the transfer of digital assets across the public Corda network which is a peer-to-peer network of DLT nodes, enabling interoperability across multiple systems, apps, and processes.

As a result, this partnership will allow SEBA to provide institutional clients the ability to issue and invest in digital securities representing financial instruments on the Corda network.

DASL’s securities offering includes several capabilities including issuance, portfolio management, asset servicing, clearing and settlement – all powered by distributed ledger technology (DLT).

Furthermore DASL’s network capabilities are fully compliant with securities regulations.The bank already has several services for their clients that relate to digital assets, and asset tokenization will be offered as a complement to SEBA’s Custody, Asset Management and Trading product.

As part of the asset tokenization offering, according to SEBA’s description, clients will be able to tokenize fiat and precious metals, alternative assets like real estate and commodities as well as explore tokenized ecosystems of companies with products (as utility tokens) and conduct security token offerings.

SEBA will create a wallet for onboarded custody customers, issue digital securities and distribute them to wealth management and other investor networks. In partnering with DASL, SEBA relies on the team’s experience building critical infrastructure for financial institutions.

A Partnership for Further Development

While still at an inception phase, the partnership may bring further product generation and liquidity creation over time, where DASL will support SEBA Bank’s strategy to be a partner to institutions.

Matthew Alexander, Head Tokenization at SEBA Bank, explains how important it is to build a trusted platform for the adoption of digital asset securitization:

“Widespread adoption of Digital Assets and securities by institutions requires trusted venues for distribution and for secondary trading and liquidity. DASL provides SEBA with an immediate and secure platform for our Digital Securities product range. We look forward to combining our strengths with those of DASL to further enhance our client solutions and services.

”“We are delighted to partner with SEBA Bank and bring them onto the public Corda Network with DASL.DASL provides an accelerator to the digital capital markets for SEBA’s institutional clients.” stated Richard Crook, Founder DASL.

Over the last two years, SEBA has made notable strides in the digital asset space. The Swiss crypto bank managed to significantly expand its products and services to the institutional market.

Earlier this year, SEBA also raised $100 million in funding six months after receiving the banking license in August 2019.

Opening up the door for asset tokenization to institutions is one of the key aspects to widespread adoption of digital assets on a large scale.

Once institutions that follow rigorous compliance measures can issue, manage, and trade digital asset securities, it could open the floodgates for interest from a wide variety of investors on a global scale.

This could be a critical point that kickstarts the transition from traditional asset securitization to all-digital.