In other news, NTAM taps the Fed, TS Imagine hires from Itiviti, and BMLL scores $26M.
New Report Focuses on Digital Custody Needs of Investors
David Easthope
Investors prefer an “institutional-grade infrastructure” for their crypto and other digital assets but securities firms will need time before they can provide that level of support, according to a new report from research firm Coalition Greenwich Market.
The report, “Providing Digital Asset Services: An Institutional Infrastructure Roadmap,” also finds that there is “some divergence about the best ways to store and protect digital assets.”
For the report, Coalition Greenwich partnered with Etana Custody to survey “86 capital markets professionals engaged with digital assets to understand their technology infrastructure preferences and choices. The study included a mix of asset managers, crypto hedge funds/VCs, family offices, and pension funds/endowments, as well as banks, brokers, exchanges, and market infrastructure firms, mainly from North America and EMEA,” officials say.
One of the key findings is that investors are facing “an occasionally bewildering array of choices across digital wallets, crypto custodians, settlement networks, and support for fiat currency and digital asset securities. Moreover, many institutions do not fully understand the regulatory landscape governing digital asset infrastructure, including custody,” according to the official announcement from the firm.
“Greater clarity on custody could go a long way to open the floodgates of institutional flows into digital assets,” says David Easthope, senior analyst for the structure and technology group at Coalition Greenwich Market. He is also the author of the report.
“The increasing diversity of digital assets held by institutions is driving about half of these firms to employ a combination of custody approaches including self-custody and third-party custody. Furthermore, among these institutions there is a very strong preference for regulated custody, with almost two-thirds of institutions saying it is very important for a custody provider to be fully regulated,” according to the report’s findings.
“And yet, many of the buy-side firms participating in the study also report they do not fully understand rules defining what it means for a custodian to be a qualified custodian (QC) for digital assets,” according to the report.
“Bringing more institutions into digital assets will require the continued build-out of a robust technological and operational infrastructure to support trading and investing. Moreover, regulatory clarity along with education by custodians about custody options will help firms better integrate digital assets into their investment frameworks,” Easthope says.
NTAM Taps Fed for Fixed Income Exec
Antulio Bomfim
Northern Trust Asset Management (NTAM), the investment management division of the custodian firm, reports that Antulio Bomfim has been hired as head of global macro, a newly created position within its global fixed income group.
Northern Trust also reports that, as of June 30, 2022, it had $1 trillion in assets under management. NTAM’s global fixed income group is responsible for $470 billion in fixed income assets under management, the firm adds in its statement.
Bomfim joins with “nearly 30 years of experience spanning roles within investment management and the Federal Reserve Board System. Most recently, he served as special adviser to the Fed Board as well as special adviser to Chairman Jerome Powell,” per the statement.
Before that, he was with Macroeconomic Advisers as “a senior managing director, co-head of Monetary Policy Insights. Prior to that, he served as a portfolio manager and co-head of interest rate strategy for OFI Institutional Asset Management, a division of Oppenheimer Funds. — L.Ch
TS Imagine Hires from Itiviti for Asia-Pacific Post
TS Imagine reports the appointment of Frederic Villain as head of sales for Asia Pacific. TS Imagine specializes in trading, portfolio, and risk management solutions for capital markets, the vendor says in a statement.
Villain will head the firm’s APAC sales team across its offices in Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo, and will be responsible for growing the business in the region, the statement notes.
He has more than 25 years of sales experience in management roles, covering marketing, sales and account management for global financial software vendors, per the firm, which adds that, previously, he was head of sales, Asia Pacific, for Itiviti, and “prior to this he led regional sales in APAC for Bloomberg, Ullink (now part of Itiviti) and SUNGARD (now part of FIS).”
TS Imagine tallies 400 employees in 10 offices worldwide, serving “approximately 500 global buy-side and sell-side institutions across North and South America, EMEA, and Asia Pacific including hedge funds, traditional asset managers, pension funds, mutual funds, and financial institutions.” — L.Ch
BMLL Scores $26 Million in Series B Funding
BMLL, a provider of “harmonized, historical Level 3 data and analytics across global equity and futures markets,” reports that it has secured a “USD 26 million Series B investment in its latest funding round. The round was led by Nasdaq Ventures, FactSet and IQ Capital’s Growth Fund, supported by ACF Investors and other new and existing investors.”
BMLL clients, “including banks, brokers, asset managers, hedge funds and global exchanges, can access BMLL’s order book data and analytics enabling them to derive predictive insights, backtest strategies to generate alpha and gain an understanding of how markets behave,” the provider says in a statement.
The funding will support investment, “in acquiring new data sets globally,” the firm adds, noting that it also will open an office in New York.
Among its customers, BMLL points are the Financial Conduct Authority and NYU’s Quant Team, which “uses the BMLL Data Lab to carry out research on the futures market at the university’s Mathematics in Finance Program.” — L.Ch
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