BNP Paribas Securities Services wants to let its institutional clients issue, transfer, settle, and safekeep tokenized bonds and equities alongside their traditional assets – and partnering with fintechs will let it do so quickly and compliantly, at scale, as various regulations shake out and evolve.
A race among the biggest banks and custodians to roll-out large-scale digital asset initiatives has been growing. Citi, BBVA, and DBS also work with Metaco, whose CEO, Adrien Treccani, cites a “momentum effect” as being in motion: “Now that some of the largest global custodians have gone public with their strategy, other banks in the market will feel the need to encroach on their turf and demonstrate their capabilities to the industry,” he told Insights Distilled. BNP will integrate Metaco’s custody platform, Harmonize, into its current infrastructure to create a “multi-asset, multi-provider platform,” giving clients more transparency into all their assets – as well as operational efficiency and risk management – though it won’t deal with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
BNP is also working with Fireblocks as its hot wallet, tokenization, and connectivity layer.