It’s all about digital assets today. Founded on Swiss and Singaporean heritage in 2017, our guest is Singtel-backed startup Sygnum, which touts itself as “the world’s first regulated digital asset bank”. 

The company was awarded with its Swiss banking and securities dealer license in 2019 by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority or FINMA. 

While the firm is not licensed as a bank here in Singapore, its Singapore arm Sygnum Singapore operates under a Capital Markets Services license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore to help accredited and institutional investors tap the digital asset markets. 

More recently, Sygnum Singapore also received in-principle approval of the Major Payments Institution license from the MAS. That’s a move said to position the firm to provide regulated crypto brokerage service in future. 

Quite a bit of jargon to get through, but at the heart of our conversation is this question – what exactly are the products and services offered by the firm and how do they differ by geography?

Meanwhile, the firm has on a group level participated on projects to tokenise paintings by artists such as Picasso – but how important is this as a business vertical for the firm? 

On Under the Radar, Drive Time’s finance presenter Chua Tian Tian posed these questions to Gerald Goh, Co-founder and CEO, Sygnum Singapore.