UBS: Will provide cryptocurrency investment channels to high net worth clients

According to Bloomberg, UBS Group AG is in the early stages of planning to offer digital currency investments to high-net-worth clients. The group is currently working with U.S. companies to seek to provide broader channels to meet customer needs.

The Swiss company is exploring the possibility of offering digital asset classes, one of the people told Bloomberg, adding that any related investment products would be small in terms of investment volume due to their high volatility.

As the crypto market heats up, more financial giants are gradually starting to offer cryptocurrency services. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is making inroads into the $1 trillion Bitcoin market and has opened up non-deliverable forward contracts, a digital financial derivative tied to the price of Bitcoin and paid in cash. Morgan Stanley plans to offer three cryptocurrency fund investment channels to high-net-worth clients. Bank of New York Mellon Corp. is developing a platform for traditional and digital assets. Citigroup is also considering cryptocurrency services.

“We are closely following developments in the digital asset space and, more importantly, we are very interested in the underlying technology that underpins digital assets, namely distributed ledger technology,” UBS said in a statement.

Philipp Rickenbacher, CEO of local rival Julius Bär Group, said at a conference last week that the wealth management firm is considering providing clients with access to crypto assets, but has no plans to directly open up bitcoin-related trading business yet.

UBS Group CEO Ralph Hamers is currently studying business digitization to cut the company's operating costs. He hopes to use artificial intelligence to lock in how to market more products to high-net-worth clients. The bank spends about $3.5 billion on technology each year to maintain and update its existing infrastructure and create new tools and products for employees and customers.