Sygnum gains Swisscom and daura as partners and Singtel Innov8 as investor

Sygnum AG, a Financial Technology company that aims to empower financial services for the digital asset ecosystem, announces today its strategic partnership with daura to build a solution to securely issue digital assets such as tokenised shares and investment products. For the secure storage of digital assets, Sygnum and Swisscom founded a joint venture: CUSTODIGIT. Furthermore, the venture capital arm of the Singtel Group, Singtel Innov8, supports Sygnum with an investment.

Sygnum is a Swiss- and Singapore-based company that was founded by an experienced interdisciplinary team of Swiss and Singaporean professionals, backed by a distinguished group of individuals and institutions. The company builds on the strengths of today’s financial services infrastructure and enhances it with the possibilities of the new world of distributed ledger technologies and digital assets – with blockchain technology being today’s most prominent example of distributed ledger technology. Sygnum aims to provide clients and partners with an integrated solution to securely issue, store, trade and manage digital assets.

Sygnum, Swisscom and daura: building an ecosystem for digital assets
As strategic partners, Sygnum, Swisscom and daura AG will build a digital asset ecosystem addressing the key pain points associated with the integration of digital ledger technology into the financial industry. The ecosystem addresses important issues such as the absence of regulated fiat-digital gateways and the lack of compliant and secure custody solutions for digital assets.

In practical terms, Sygnum and its partners are working on the following solutions:

Institutional investor-grade custody solution
Secure access to and storage of digital assets through an institutional investor-grade custody solution targeting regulated financial institutions. The application is being developed by CUSTODIGIT AG, a newly founded joint venture between Swisscom and Sygnum.

Peter Hofmann, Senior FinTech expert at Swisscom and interim CEO of CUSTODIGIT, said: “The cooperation of Sygnum and CUSTODIGIT combines unique know-how in the fields of digital assets, banking, compliance and technology. This fosters the development of a digital assets custody platform for the regulated financial industry.”

Issuance and settlement of digital assets
Secure and seamless issuance and efficient settlement of digital assets, including fiat gateway, starting with the tokenization of Swiss SME (small and mid-sized enterprises) shares. The solution is being developed in close collaboration with daura.

“Sygnum and daura are a perfect ecosystem fit. We both share a vision of tokenized assets being held on the blockchain. While daura provides the legal and technical framework to issue shares on the blockchain in a fully compliant manner with Swiss regulations, Sygnum is building an integrated infrastructure solution to help companies raise capital from investors”, says Peter Schnürer, CEO of daura.

AML/KYC module
An “Anti-Money Laundering/Know your Customer” module that fits seamlessly into today’s regulatory framework which Sygnum is developing together with the Swiss law firm MME, an integrated law, tax and compliance firm.

“We designed a framework to merge compliance relevant blockchain-based information with existing AML concepts. The result is an efficient AML tool which meets Swiss compliance standards”, says Luka Müller, Founding Partner and Chairman of the board of Sygnum.

Switzerland and Singapore as target markets
Sygnum has decided to develop its products and services simultaneously in two of the leading onshore financial hubs – Switzerland and Singapore. Both countries are recognized as strong, internationally oriented financial centres, share many cultural and economic similarities and are also at the very forefront of digital asset innovation globally.

Manuel Krieger and Mathias Imbach, Founding Partners of Sygnum, are delighted with the progress made to advance the digital asset ecosystem. “We are grateful for the support received by key institutions in both Switzerland and Singapore. We are confident that together we can help to make a difference in solving the challenges that the finance industry and the new world of distributed ledger technology and digital assets face. In the first phase, our planned offerings will target qualified/accredited as well as institutional investors. In the second phase, we plan to offer bank-to-bank technology solutions to empower other financial institutions to provide services to the token economy. Through this, we hope to help put the new and rapidly growing digital asset ecosystem on a solid and future-proof foundation. The table is set – we now continue to focus on delivery.”

About Swisscom
Swisscom, Switzerland’s leading telecoms company and one of its leading IT companies, is headquartered in Ittigen, Berne. About 20,000 employees generated sales of CHF 8.7 billion in the first nine months of 2018. Swisscom supports regulated financial institutions in digitization. One of the central fields are digital asset services. The provider aims to build an ecosystem of blockchain technology and integrated solutions for digital assets.

About Singtel Innov8
Singtel Innov8, the venture capital arm of the Singtel Group, invests in and partners with innovative tech start-ups worldwide. It has a fund size of US$250 million and its own set of decision making, approval and funding processes. Beyond funding, Singtel Innov8 is a gateway for start-ups to tap on the resources and expertise of the Singtel Group, while enabling the Group to gain access to emerging technologies.  Singtel Innov8 focuses its investments on technologies and solutions that can lead to quantum changes in network capabilities, next generation devices, digital services and enablers to enhance customer experience. Headquartered in Singapore, Singtel Innov8 also has offices in San Francisco and Tel Aviv.

About daura
daura AG is a joint venture of MME and Swisscom. The company digitalises Swiss SME shares with the help of blockchain technology. Daura guarantees the worldwide, secure transfer of Swiss shares and their registration on the blockchain. These shares enable non-listed companies to access the capital market. All legal functions of the shares, such as exercising voting rights, will be covered in a smart contract and are fully compliant to Swiss regulations.

About CUSTODIGIT
CUSTODIGIT AG is a joint venture of Swisscom and Sygnum. It aims to develop an institutional investor-grade custody solution targeting regulated financial institutions to allow their clients secure access and storage of digital assets.

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