Aegis Custody, a US-based digital financial service provider backed by Chinese investment conglomerate Fosun International, says it’s been licensed as Hong Kong’s first digital asset custodian.
Serra Wei, Aegis Custody’s founder and chief executive officer, says this will allow the company to offer services to institutional investors worldwide. It’s also applying for a similar licence in the US.
“Through our Hong Kong business, we will be able to service clients interested in the new digital asset economy on a global scale, while we continue our licence application as a qualified custodian in the United States,” Ms. Wei says in a statement on July 29.
The company is also considering applying for a licence in other key markets in Asia Pacific, a spokesperson tells Asia Asset Management, without providing specific details.
Aegis Custody, which was established last year, has developed a distributed hardware device with a transaction system tailored to institutional needs, which is used to provide digital asset custody solutions for institutional investors such as family offices.
Last November, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission unveiled a new regulatory approach on virtual or digital assets that focuses more on safe custody of assets and cybersecurity to protect investor interest.
According to Aegis Custody, more than US$2 billion of assets have been lost to internal theft, cybersecurity attacks and human error globally in the past five years. As such, institutional investors are demanding that their third-party custodians provide advanced protection, private key management and recovery plans for digital assets.
San Francisco-based Aegis Custody does not disclose data on its assets under custody.
Shanghai-based Fosun International had around 638.8 billion RMB ($93.1 billion) of total assets under management at the end of 2018.