UBS Group AG, a Swiss multinational investment bank and financial services company, is deliberating on providing digital currency investments to its wealthy customers, according to Bloomberg. The Swiss bank, like some U.S. firms who open up this kind of project to their clients, hope to fulfill client demand by providing a variety of options regarding the crypto asset class.
As Bitcoin continues to have critics who view it as an unintelligent investment and believe that those who invest in it will lose their money, the asset also has supporters. For the reason that the number of people interested in cryptocurrencies keeps on increasing UBS is concerned that it may lose clients if it doesn’t offer the investment to its wealthy clients, thus, the deliberation.
Due to the volatility common with cryptocurrencies, UBS will cautiously invest the funds via third-party investment vehicles. The amount to be invested would also be a very small portion of the clients’ total wealth as per the report.
UBS Group AG is based in Switzerland. With other branches in the cities of Zürich and Basel, it is a major financial center as it is one of the largest Swiss banking institutions and private banks in the world.
Ralph Hamers, the Chief Executive Officer, mentioned that the bank looks for ways to cut costs and digitize operations and that this mindset is also guiding the new project it plans to launch.
One of the costs the bank hopes to cut is the $3.5 billion cost incurred per year on technology to maintain and modernize its existing infrastructure and also technology for designing new tools for its employees and products for its clients.
“We are monitoring the developments in the field of digital assets closely,” UBS said in a statement. “Importantly, we are most interested in the technology which underpins digital assets, namely the distributed ledger technology.”
Goldman Sachs, like the Swiss bank, announced that it wants to start offering bitcoin investments to its wealthy clients later this year. The multinational investment bank and financial services company also noted that it plans to offer a “full-spectrum” of cryptocurrency investments using any suitable investment vehicle along the line.
