• The bank has partnered with the European Central Bank (ECB) to test the digital Euro.
• The bank has also issued euro bonds on the Ethereum blockchain.

In an official statement issued on Wednesday, one of Europe’s biggest banks, Societe Generale, announced the expansion of its crypto asset management services through its security services subsidiary. Societe Generale can now act as valuator, fund custodian, or liability manager for any of its clients that are digital asset fund managers. The aim is to smoothen the process of including crypto assets into institutional investors’ portfolios.

The bank’s newest client is Arquant Capital SAS, a licensed, France-based asset management firm. Arquant has two euro-domiciled crypto asset products: Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and other crypto derivatives.

In his remarks, the head of Societe Generale Securities Services (SGSS), David Abitbol, said;

the combination of the innovation expertise from Societe Generale’s bank and technical skills from Arquant Capital would enable the SGSS to expand and meet asset managers’ diversification needs.

Arquant Capital CEO, Eron Angjele, commented that the partnership would afford Arquant Capital an innovative structuring to scale their offerings and focus on providing value for their clients. Per multiple data, SGSS is one of the top three custodians across Europe and the top 10 globally. It manages more than $4.277 trillion in assets and provides trustee services for 3,312 funds.

Also, it provides valuation services for 4,426 funds while its more than 4,000 staff members are scattered across 22 locations globally. In April 2019, the bank issued a 100-million-euro bond on the Ethereum blockchain through its French specialized credit institution, Societe Generale SFH. In the same month, a Societe Generale-owned bank (Kleinwort Hambros) launched an exchange-traded note of blockchain-related firms.

In addition, the bank proposed the submission of bond tokens as collateral for a loan of the DAI stablecoin in October 2021. Furthermore, the top financial institution launched a security token on the Tezos blockchain in April last year. The bank stated that it was launching the security token as a first step to starting full-scale crypto market operations this year.

Societe Generale is among the leading financial institutions in partnership with the European central bank to establish the digital Euro. The central banks of Germany and Italy have been working together to develop settlements in central bank money of DLT (Distributed Technology Ledger)-based asset exchanges.

ECB partners with five tech firms to create digital Euro prototypes

On Wednesday, the ECB partnered with five tech firms to develop various prototypes for its digital Euro. The regional banking regulator announced that each firm would focus on creating a specific use case for the digital Euro. Amazon is to test the application of e-commerce payments, while Nexi and EPI focus on point-of-sale transactions for the payer and the payee.

Also, Wordline and Caixabank are to test offline/online peer-to-peer payments. Through these tests, the ECB aims to determine the effectiveness of the digital Euro with the prototypes these tech firms will create.