The latest tech news in wealth management across the world.

Symbo Platform Holdings, a Singapore-based insurance business covering segments including life policies, has won a brokerage licence in the Asian city-state to open its proprietary digital platform services to retail and corporate clients.

The firm was set up in Singapore less than two years ago and the organisation intends to expand across Indonesia, Malaysia and Southeast Asia. The company is backed by investors including, former Sequoia Partner Yinglan Tan’s Insignia Ventures and Dymon Asia Ventures. It has already “achieved success” in India.

Symbo’s platform provides customers with digital solutions to buy and run a range of general and life insurance products across personal and commercial insurance lines.

“We’re seeing a major opportunity to lean into the digital opportunity to transform insurance and reinsurance in the ASEAN region as digital penetration continues to leapfrog ahead of other regions and demand for risk cover continues to grow with changing demographics,” Siraj Ali, Symbo board member, said.

As part of the expansion, Symbo has appointed Laurens Koppelaar as head of international business and Subhajit Mandal as product head.

Koppelaar joins from global insurance company Allianz, where he was head of market management for Southeast Asia for Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, leading distribution strategy and market expansion for non-life insurance products across the region.

Mandal’s career spans insurance, venture capital, proprietary trading firms and family offices. Prior to joining Symbo, he was a director at MetLife Innovation Centre (LumenLab), Singapore. He covered LumenLab’s fintech initiatives across Southeast Asia – launching Vitana, the first of a kind blockchain-enabled health insurance within the MAS Sandbox. He is also a founder and board member of Singapore Fintech Association.

ANXONE
ANXONE, a member of Hong Kong-listed BC Group, has launched an exchange for digital assets – aka crypto-currencies – which it says breaks new ground for the Hong Kong market.

The exchange has gone live and taking on board professional traders. As part of the rollout, it is giving out 100 days of no-fee trading to all verified accounts between 11 March and 18 June.

With crypto-currencies exhibiting what is at times wild levels of volatility, groups are bringing out new tools which they say offer the ability to hedge exposure and improve liquidity. To some degree, firms have told this publication they see crypto-markets evolving to a more mature stage, rather as the Internet did after the dotcom bubble popped.

"The digital asset economy is in the early stages of a strong rebound based on professionalization of the asset class," Dave Chapman, ANXONE chief executive.

"2018 was a year of muted sentiment following the realisation that a large number of initial coin offerings were not supported by fundamentals. But so far in 2019 we have seen consolidation of key digital assets and a shift in focus to stable coins and an expected up-swell in security token offerings. Resurgent sentiment has also been supported by the increasing number of jurisdictions taking steps to regulate the sector, which we consider a pre-condition for the full professionalization of the asset class,” he said. 

A number of banks are entering the crypto-currency space and the associated blockchain distributed ledger technology field, enthused by these areas' famed ability to transact more quickly and efficiently. Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies remain controversial, however, with some governments frowning on them as potentially enabling money laundering and other abuses.

The wealth management industry can be sceptical or even hostile to crypto-currencies – a recent conference in Interlaken, Switzerland, which was attended by this news service, heard concerns about the source of wealth behind crypto trades. Advocates argue that blockchain, which enables transactions to go ahead without the need to be validated by a third party, can rapidly speed up data flow and slash costs. Back- and middle-office functions could be revolutionised, for example. Jurisdictions such as Switzerland, Singapore, Abu Dhabi and Liechtenstein are striving to gain a lead as hubs for such organisations. The US, the UK, Singapore, Estonia, Canada and Australia are also prominent jurisdictions.

An issue has been high volatility. An entrant into the field, BitSpread, has developed investment banking-type tools to help clients hedge exposures. Vontobel and Falcon Private Bank, two other Swiss firms, have also entered the crypto-currency and blockchain space.