One wouldn’t usually associate Switzerland and Singapore in the realms of fintech, but both worlds are colliding at the Singapore Fintech Festival.
From 12th-14th November 2018, the Swiss Pavilion in the Singapore Fintech Festival this year will be hosting a slew of innovative Swiss firms, with representatives coming from all sorts of fintech spectrums.
Compared to many other nations here, Switzerland’s fintech scene hosts a variety of companies that exist as third-party entities that aim to bring incumbent institutions into the 21st century. This will be your opportunity to brush shoulders with fintech innovators from the region, figure out fintech trends of the west, and perhaps learn a few tricks that can be applied over on the East.
In fact, Those interested to hear from key players in Switzerland can also check out an open stage presentation session titled “Switzerland, The Innovative Fintech Hub” hosted by the Switzerland Global Enterprise (SGE). The event will be held at 4.00pm, at the Sandbox Stage, Hall 1 of Singapore Fintech Festival.
This will be followed by some welcoming remarks at the Swiss Pavillion booth, which can be found in Hall 4, at 5.00pm by both the Ambassador of Switzerland in Singapore, Mr. Fabrice Filliez and guest-of-honour, Jörg Gasser, the State Secretary of the Ministry of Finance Switzerland. There will be a networking session with light refreshments.
In fact, attendees can also look forward to a Swiss Reception, co-hosted by Switzerland Global Enterprise (SGE), the Swiss Business Hub ASEAN, and the Embassy of Switzerland.
For the rest of the time, you’ll be able to catch up with the following innovators in Hall 4 at the Swiss Pavillion (Booth 4B19):
AlgoTrader Founder and CEO Andy Flury spoke at the Global Derivatives Conference 2016 in Budapest.
Algotrader, like the name implies, is a Swiss-based trading software designed for quantitative hedge funds. The platform allows the automation of trading strategies in equity, forex and derivative markets, and even allows algorithmic trading automation of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
In March, Algotrader raised CHF1.4 million in late seed funding to invest into their marketing, sales, product development and international expansion. Soon after, the company appointed a new COO to head global sales, particularly an expansion into the USA.
Since 2011, Sanostro partners up with quantitative funds to deliver cost-efficient downside risk-management solution to institutional investors—like banks, insurance companies, pensions, hedge funds, REITs, investment advisors, endowments, and mutual funds.
The company offers hedge fund intelligence services, including model-based hedging solutions and tactical asset allocation models. Their goal is to offer risk management without the hefty price tag, using market intelligence technology that is already available to some leading quantitative investment firms, thus in a way, democratising it for use without the R&D costs that usually come from in-house development.
The company has been making a slew of partnerships in the name of diversifying or expanding on their offerings, with one being a partnership with Blockchain Valley Ventures to raise funds for its SYGNAL platform, aimed at becoming a gateway for applied AI, and using blockchain to overcome trust issues related to selection bias, curve fitting and smart contracts.
Six operates the infrastructure of Switzerland’s financial center, and stands for Swiss Infrastructure and Exchange. Their key role is to develop and maintain securities trading and post-trading platforms, provide financial information, and sell cashless payment systems. It is among the world’s 20 major stock exchanges.
Following an exchange from the traditional finance world, Swiss Pavillion will also be hosting an exchange from the “future”—a cryptocurrency exchange. The Swiss Crypto Exchange is one of the very few regulated Swiss exchanges for blockchain-based products and, of course, cryptocurrencies.
Most recently, one of its more interesting developments is to team up with Metaco to connect banks to eliminate risks associated with storage of assets on cryptocurrency exchanges, by launching a new exchange and custodial service for digital assets. The exchange will provide liquidity and technology to new ecosystems built by banks.
This platform is yet another information platform, this time a web-based one geared towards banks and asset managers in particular, offering free-to-use platforms in Switzerland and Hong Kong.
The platform exists so that banks and asset managers can use a modular platform during their entire investment and advisory process to not only improve the quality of advice for client, but also crucially keep up with regulatory or tax-relevant demands.
The company has a global partnership with HSBC Bank as well to boost its offerings.
Compared to many fintech offerings today, Investment Navigator offers the relatively straightforward service of holistic consultancy services, as well as modular tech-driven solutions that can be utilised.
Metaco, which appeared earlier in this list to collaborate with the Swiss Crypto Exchange, is a company focused on building digital wallets and custodian solutions for cryptocurrencies. Its current crowning jewel is SILO, a cryptocurrency wallet-management system launched just this January offering custody and the ability to process transactions with higher security than the regularly issued wallets for financial institutions.
The name of the game for this company is partnerships, bringing their expertise in secure digital wallets for institutional use to the market.
This financial technology holding company provides blockchain-based services through three subsidiaries: Crypto Fund AG (Asset Management), Crypto Broker AG (Brokerage), and Crypto Storage AG (Storage).
Its goal though, which reflects in its offerings is to facilitate the implementation of blockchain technology into the global economy, and following the Swiss regulator’s approval, now eyes the Asian market, with Hong Kong and Singapore in mind.
Crypto Finance AG is a financial technology holding company founded in June 2017. The Group provides blockchain-related services through its three subsidiaries: Crypto Fund AG (Asset Management), Crypto Broker AG (Brokerage), and Crypto Storage AG (Storage).
Idigita is a regtech company, a joint venture between Bizzozero Partners (BRP) and Orbium, both from the world of finance. The company offers an inData solution, a digitised version of country manuals published by BRP to offer regulatory information for banks and independent financial advisors from across the globe.
It covers 120 countries and can be used with Indigita’s inRules, which crunches the data to develop and deliver tailored cross-border regulation recommendations to individual clients.
Bizzozero Partners will also be at the event, offering know-how acquired from working with supervisory authorities in Switzerland and the UK.
ChainSecurity offers Smart Contract audits, both blockchain and otherwise, along with security audits and monitoring based in Switzerland. Any company that passes an audit by ChainSecurity is often a newsworthy occasion in the region these days. In fact, Singapore-born Kyber Network is seemingly a satisfied customer of this service.
Besides their products, the company engages in research in the areas of system security, program analysis, and machine learning, having published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers.
Axon Vive leverages smartphone sensor data to allow partners to deliver effective travel assistance communications to its users, with particular focus on transit agencies. This includes smart personalised messages based on where the users are and what they are doing, seamless ticketing, and ancillary revenue based on understanding users’ preferences and needs based on data collected.
The platform can be integrated via SDKs into existing apps or launched as new white label apps. It’s available in Europe, USA, and Southeast Asia.
Axon Ivy is a subsidiary of the Axon Group, and its core business is to help other businesses with their digital transformation projects worldwide, via knowledge, tech and resources.
The digital business platform by AXON Ivy solves specific challenges, such as the development of new disruptive business models, establishing missing end-to-end core processes or improving inefficient back office processes.
With a presence in both Switzerland and Singapore, Sygnum develops integrated solutions to help securely store, trade and manage digital assets. The company’s vision is the potential of blockchain or distributed ledger technology to impact and change the financial industry in the coming years.
The company is backed by SIX, and Singtel.
The company is aiming for a variety of tokenised assets services, and believes that the system can be adapted for assets like company shares, securities, bonds, and even real estate. It plans to convert all of tehm into tokens to enable either direct transfers between traders or more efficient matching and settlement through third-party platforms, like exchanges.
It is aiming a broad suite of tokenised assets services for institutional investors. The so-called ‘token economy’ space, which digitises a range of financial assets for faster, more efficient trading, is rapidly gaining momentum around the world.
It is believed that the system can be adapted for any form of asset from company shares to securities, bonds and real estate. Putting such tokens on the blockchain promises either direct transfer between traders or more efficient matching and settlement through third party platforms, such as exchanges.
Currently, Smart Valor is a blockchain startup with goals of reinventing private banking, but it is also raising an ICO for a related purpose.
Smart Valor’s ICO aims to open up the capital markets that are usually concentrated amongst a small, elite pool of investors, due to intermediaries, fees and minimum buy-ins. Claiming that traditional alternative investments constitute to a $7 trillion industry, Smart Valor aims to tokenize assets and focus on alternative investments, and of course cryptocurrency.
Currently Smart Valor is raising an ICO, but already has secured significant funding in its earlier stages. It is said that the ICO seems to be more of a marketing gimmick.
UBS is one of the biggest banks in Switzerland and has been around for 150 years. It is a multinational investment bank and financial services company as well. In 2012, the bank refocused its efforts around wealth management, and limited sell-side operations.
Currently, the bank maintains a presence in many major financial centers, and has a reputation for a culture of banking secrecy, and thus, bank/client confidentiality.
Swisscom AG is a telecommunications provider in Switzerland, and 51% owned by The Swiss Confederation. Besides that, the company lends a heavy hand into Switzerland’s startup scene, and even releases a startup radar, which are selected base
In fact, Swisscom has set aside CHF 10 million (US$ 9.92 million) to further its targeted investments into promising fintech startups, and launched online bookkeeping targeted at SMEs.
In fact, Sygnum and Swisscom have formed a joint venture for the secure storage of digital assets, dubbed Custodigit.
The Crypto Valley Association was established to grow Switzerland’s strengths to build global blockchain and cryptographic technologies ecosystems, support and connect startups to established enterprises through policy recommendations, connect projects across industries, initiating and enabling research, as well as hosting a slew of related events.
Basically, they exist to cultivate the ecosystem and scene in Switzerland.
Featured Image via Swiss Finance + Technology Association of the Singapore Fintech Festival 2017
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