Vontobel's wealthy clients are interested in crypto, says CEO

Zeno Staub, CEO of Swiss private banking and investment management giant Vontobel, has revealed that some of the company’s wealthy clients have crypto exposure.

Speaking to Bloomberg on Tuesday, Staub stated that Vontobel's clients have an interest in cryptocurrencies.

According to Staub, blockchain technology will have a profound impact on global finance. As part of the interview, the Vontobel CEO described the novel tech as the “Logic consequence of the general trend securitization because it is the only available technology that can create trust without a central counterparty.”

Commenting on the bank’s crypto offerings for wealthy clients, Staub stated:

“What we offer to our clients is that we’ve wrapped some cryptocurrencies in a secure, convenient and easy to handle way, and clients appreciate that and allocate part of their wealth to that.”

In its half-year financials published on Tuesday, the bank also reported significant interest for its Bitcoin (BTC) tracker certificate investment product. According to the report, the bank’s assets under management grew 11% in the first half of 2021, reaching an all-time high of 274.5 billion Swiss francs (about $300 billion).

Indeed, as previously reported by Cointelegraph, Vontobel is one of the pro-crypto banks in Switzerland. Back in 2016 and 2017, the bank was already creating Bitcoin-based investment products.

In January 2019, Vontobel also created a regulated crypto custody product for banks and asset managers.

Related: Many JPMorgan clients see Bitcoin as an asset class, says senior exec

Staub’s comments reinforce previous statements by other wealth management firms about the growing appetite for crypto exposure among their big-money clients.

Such is the extent of this growing interest that investment banks are becoming more incentivized to offer crypto investment products to their rich clients.

Earlier in July, JPMorgan announced plans to provide access to Grayscale’s Bitcoin trust to retail wealth clients.