SEI® (NASDAQ:SEIC) today announced that SEI Investments (Europe) Limited (SIEL) will partner with Ctrl Alt, a leading tokenization platform, and participate in the Bank of England’s Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS). The DSS aims to facilitate innovation in market infrastructure and protect financial stability and market integrity by evaluating blockchain and distributed ledger technology in a non-live environment. In collaboration with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the DSS will provide a regulatory framework to explore the application of digital securities in a traditional financial infrastructure.
With 10% of global GDP expected to be tokenized and stored on the blockchain by 2027,1 , numerous organizations have recognized the impact that tokenization could have on the financial services industry. Established to explore blockchain’s potential to improve the efficiency of post-trade processes, the DSS will evaluate how these technologies can be used by firms to issue and trade securities. As part of the collaboration, SEI will provide the underlying assets for tokenization in the initiative’s second phase, and if successful, SEI may manage custody and crypto-asset activity during that phase.
Sneha Shah, Head of New Business Ventures at SEI, said:
“Tokenized solutions have the potential to enhance security, transparency, and efficiency to drive significant improvements across financial services. Building upon our roots in innovation and leveraging our ability to connect the industry in ways that others cannot, we’re committed to unlocking benefits across the entire asset lifecycle and value chain through this collaboration. We look forward to working with Ctrl Alt, the Bank of England, and the FCA to explore the application of this technology.”
In addition to this initiative, SEI Ventures Inc. made an early-stage investment in Ctrl Alt. SEI Ventures is SEI’s venture capital program based in the U.S., focused on creating new, sustainable growth engines by exploring the emerging frontiers of wealth and its impact. Ctrl Alt is an infrastructure platform that makes structuring and investing in tokenized asset classes cost-effective, secure, and accessible. The strategic investment is immaterial to SEI’s financial results.
Discussing the strategic investment, Alex Cochand, Director of the SEI Venture Studio, said:
“The financial services landscape continues to experience significant digital evolution, with blockchain technology demonstrating the potential to create a more efficient and secure ecosystem. We are focused on making strategic investments in the fintech and wealthtech space that enable us to accelerate and capitalize on opportunities to transform the wealth management experience, and we’re thrilled to collaborate with Ctrl Alt to explore ways to potentially unlock those opportunities. We believe the combination of our 57 years of industry knowledge with Ctrl Alt’s expertise and nimbleness will help drive innovation and growth.”
Matt Ong, CEO and Founder at Ctrl Alt, added:
“As interest in tokenization continues to increase among financial institutions, we’ve built our solutions to seamlessly enable the tokenization of assets within the parameters of traditional financial structuring, so the industry can benefit from the technology with legal certainty. SEI’s breadth of capabilities across technology, operations, and asset management enables them to innovate across the financial services ecosystem because of the connections they’ve built. We’re confident our strategic partnership will help push the industry forward and power the future of wealth.”
1Jeremy Allaire, “Blockchain is in from the cold—and stablecoins are set to change the financial system forever,” World Economic Forum, Jan. 15, 2024.
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