Berner Cantonal Bank (BEKB) becomes a member of the Swiss SIX Digital Exchange (SDX), the world's first fully regulated financial market infrastructure for digital assets, and issues daura participation certificates as its first transaction.
SDX, BEKB and daura share a common goal: to establish a Swiss digital ecosystem in finance for the issuance, trading and custody of tokenized shares for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Since April 2022, daura has been a partner of SDX as a provider of DLT-based share registry services and tokenization.
Berner Cantonal Bank at the forefront of tokenization
The joining of BEKB represents another milestone in the development of DLT securities in Switzerland. The collaboration between SDX, BEKB and daura enables SMEs to issue their shares digitally, i.e. in the form of uncertificated securities or DLT securities according to the Swiss Law of Obligations, and to make the shares seamlessly available for regulated bank custody.
"With this partnership, BEKB is further expanding its offering around tokenized shares. Through the involvement of the central securities depository (CSD), we enable the bank custody of such shares for a broad audience. In this way, BEKB is reaffirming its activities in this area - and as a cantonal bank, we are making a contribution to helping digital shares achieve a breakthrough on a broad front." - Armin Brun, CEO BEKB
As part of the collaboration, daura will be the preferred provider for BEKB to offer its digital share register and digital general meetings in real time. BEKB is a leader in providing secondary liquidity to Swiss private companies through its SME platform. SDX will provide the digital financial market infrastructure for digital assets issued in regulated, intermediated form. Investors will benefit from regulated bank custody in their securities account and easier transferability.
Digital share issue
For BEKB, this partnership represents the next step in the expansion of its SME|X secondary market, which will thus become accessible to other players outside the existing ecosystem in the foreseeable future. SMEs in particular should benefit from this, as they will henceforth be able to issue their shares digitally and thus address a broader investor base. daura will be the first user of this model to issue participation certificates, which will be made available in the banking system via BEKB; these shares will then be registered on the SDX central depository.
"With this partnership, we enable Swiss SMEs to connect their share register directly to the Swiss financial infrastructure. This means that shares can be booked directly to investors' accounts at custodian banks and traded on a marketplace at the push of a button. With SDX and BEKB, we have two competent partners who understand the requirements of Swiss SMEs and can implement them with innovative technology." - Peter Schnürer, CEO daura
