Europe Financial Institutions Come Together To Launch A Blockchain Investment Platform

Financial institutions all across Europe have come together to provide a blockchain-based platform to the investment fund industry. Europe has been one of the most attractive destinations for blockchain development as several countries support the distributed ledger technology.

Dubbed as the “FundsDLT” the blockchain-based system was initially incubated by the Luxembourg stock exchange along with its affiliate partner Fundsquare. Investment giants like Credit Suisse Asset Management, Natixis Investment Managers, Clearstream, etc have announced the Series A investment round for FundsDLT.

As per the press release, FundsDLT is an permission-based blockchain platform built on the Ethereum blockchain network. This platform ensures high performance and privacy and enables the reengineering of fund distribution value chain, covering the entire fund life cycle from front to back.

The platform eliminates all the redundant activities thereby reduces costs for distributors, asset managers, asset services, and the overall supply chain. This helps to build the foundation for digital fund distribution by achieving absolute transparency.

Speaking about this new platform, Robert Scharfe, CEO of the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, said: “The launch of FundsDLT is an important step toward our shared goal of promoting the adoption of blockchain and digital assets across the financial industry. The Luxembourg Stock Exchange has played a catalyzing role in this development, and it is exciting to see the expanding ecosystem around FundsDLT”.

A Credit Suisse spokesperson said that although the system is Ethereum-based, it uses the Quorum system as a private blockchain in order to ensure absolute privacy and performance. Besides, Credit Suisse also made it clear that the system doesn’t provide any exposure to crypto assets, rather it is just planning to leverage DLT for providing services with enhanced efficiency.

Michel Degen, Head of Credit Suisse Asset Management Switzerland and EMEA, said: “We continuously seek to ease the access to our products for clients. As part of our digitalization journey, we consider FundsDLT as a further powerful lever to increase efficiency but also to create new distribution channels, enabling considerable benefits for both clients and asset managers.”

Joseph Pinto, Chief Global Operating Officer of Natixis Investment Managers, commented: “The digital transformation poses some of the greatest challenges and opportunities for the investment management industry today, and blockchain can play an important role. We believe it is critical for the investment management industry to increase transparency and improve operations rapidly. FundsDLT will help us achieve these objectives and will, in turn, allow us to provide an enhanced experience for investors by leveraging blockchain technology.”