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Opportunities in digital assets and digital custody: Tracking the modernisation of standard custody offering
Journal of Securities Operations & Custody,
15
(3),
194-204
(2023)
Abstract
Digital assets are a new asset class whose adoption necessitates a transformation of custody similar to the transition from paper-based securities to a fully dematerialised securities system. This paper explores how traditional custodians can manage this transition in a proper way and employ distributed ledger technology to increase the efficiency of their operations and to provide digital asset and traditional services in an integrated way. Starting by describing the status of custody, the paper then describes the opportunities and challenges of blockchain-based digital asset custody and elaborates on the proper ways of integrating the novel platforms and processes in the business model of a traditional custodian. On this basis, a framework is developed for a future integrated custody service.
Keywords: digital assets; digital custody; blockchain; key management; tokenisation
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Radoslaw Ignatowicz was born in Warsaw, Poland, graduated in finance and banking at the High School of Economics in Warsaw and the EMBA programme of the Warsaw Institute of Technology, London School of Economics, HEC and University of Bergen. Radoslaw (Radek) Ignatowicz is a senior director and product owner of Custody in Raiffeisen Bank International Global Investor Services Division in Vienna, where he looks after custody product development, participating in digital assets and digital custody strategy design. He has over 30 years of experience in the custody business. Starting his professional career in the securities services industry soon after the recreation of the Polish capital market in the 1990s, he became a head of custody for leading custody providers in Poland, such as Bank Pekao, Bank Austria, Unicredit, Deutsche Bank and Raiffeisen Bank International. He also worked as a board member of the Polish Central Depository for Securities (KDPW), where he represented the institution in EACH, CCP12 and ECSDA working groups. For eight years he led the Polish Custodian Bank Council, participating in shaping the framework of the Polish capital market. He is actively engaged in creating and implementing the direct access model of Raiffeisen Bank International AG in the Central and Eastern European markets.
Alfred Taudes was born in Vienna, graduated in business administration and MIS at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (WU) and Vienna University, a professor in Augsburg, Essen and Münster, and a visiting professor at the Universities of Tsukuba and Kobe, Japan. Since 1993 he has been Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (WU). He was the coordinator of the FWF Special Research Area 10 Adaptive Models in Economics and Management Science, Head of the WWT project Integrated Demand and Supply Chain Management, awarded the Science Prize of the City of Vienna and the Best Paper Award of the Association of University Teachers of Business Administration. From 2008 to 2015, he was Head of the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management, in 2018, he founded the WU Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics, and, in 2019, the Austrian Blockchain Centre. He has more than 100 publications in international journals such as Management Science, Marketing Science, Management Information Systems, etc to his credit. He is the organiser of the workshop series on cryptoeconomics, founder of the working paper series on cryptoeconomics and coordinator of teaching on cryptoeconomics at WU in the undergraduate, graduate and MBA programmes. He has overseen blockchain projects with the City of Vienna, the Austrian National Bank and Raiffeisen Bank International. He is a reviewer for Cryptoeconomic Systems, and is the organiser of the International Workshop on Distributed Ledgers and Related Technologies at DEXA 2022, Vienna.
