\n \u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bDigital assets are usually discussed as a new investment category and viewed by HNWIs as important to preserve long-term wealth and legacy planning, tokenized RWA are deployed for portfolio diversification. Whilst overall acknowledged, Reto Marx is more interested in what sits beneath them: the infrastructure on which assets are issued, held, transferred, settled and used as collateral. For private banks and wealth managers, the shift will unlock new client opportunities while transforming the economics of how such services are delivered.
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\nSygnum was founded on the premise that this transition should occur \u00a0within a regulated environment. The global digital asset banking group, founded on Swiss and Singapore heritage, is a licensed bank in Switzerland and holds both a Capital Markets Services (CMS) licence and a Major Payment Institution (MPI) licence in Singapore. It also has a European Union Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR) licence in Liechtenstein and regulated presences in Luxembourg and Abu Dhabi.
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\nMarx became Chief Executive Officer of Sygnum Singapore on 1 August 2026, bringing more than 25 years of experience across traditional wealth management, financial intermediaries, products and risk. His immediate priority is to deepen Sygnum’s presence in Asia and replicate more of the business-to-business (B2B & B2B2C) model developed and successfully deployed in Switzerland. Over the longer term, he believes that tokenisation, digital money and interoperable blockchain infrastructure will converge into a common financial layer – with regulated institutions and human judgement remaining firmly at its core.\n <\/p>\n
Key Takeaways<\/p>\n
\n\tRegulation is the starting point: Sygnum was established to bring digital assets into a trusted financial setting. Its licences and regulated presences span Switzerland, Singapore, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Abu Dhabi.
\n\tDigital rails affect access and economics: Blockchain infrastructure can support digitally native assets, tokenised money, real-time settlement and round-the-clock transferability. Marx further believes it has the potential to reduce costs more fundamentally than conventional form of automation.
\n\tSygnum supplies a ready-made institutional shelf: Banks and financial intermediaries can connect their client channels to Sygnum’s custody, execution, staking, lending and investment capabilities. Marx puts implementation timelines at around six months or more, compared with two to three years for some internally developed solutions.
\n\tExternal asset managers (EAMs) can bring disconnected assets into view: A regulated platform enables advisers to incorporate clients’ private-wallet holdings into a broader wealth relationship, allowing them to service assets that previously sat outside their advisory remit.
\n\tAsia is a natural proving ground: Marx views the region as highly receptive to digital innovation, providing an environment in which new technologies can be tested and scaled. Singapore is both a growth market and a strategic hub for extending Sygnum’s institutional model across Asia.
\n\tTechnology will not remove the human: Sygnum is automating processes and integrating artificial intelligence (AI), but Marx expects human judgment, accountability and client relationships to remain central to the delivery of financial services
\n\tInteroperability is the critical threshold: The true breakthrough comes when platforms can seamlessly transfer assets between one another, distribute them at scale, generate liquidity and recognise them as eligible collateral.
\n\tTrusted counterparties will remain: Self-custody creates cyber, operational and succession risks. Marx expects certain regulated intermediaries to continue playing a critical role in asset safekeeping and continuity, even as some layers of intermediaries disappear.
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A Regulated Route into Digital Assets<\/p>\n
Sygnum emerged from an idea formed around the 2017 Singapore FinTech Festival, was incorporated in Switzerland and Singapore in 2018, and launched Swiss banking operations in 2019. It now reports more than USD6 billion in assets under administration, around 2,300 high net worth (HNW) and institutional clients, more than 250 employees and six licences.<\/p>\n
Sygnum was built inside a regulated perimeter from the outset, giving investors access to digital assets with familiar standards of trust, governance and accountability.<\/p>\n
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“We were built to bring digital assets into a regulated environment,” he says. “Our purpose is to enable clients participate with confidence. It is about people, technology and transforming the underlying rails on which finance operates.”<\/p>\n
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Cryptoassets were the first widely recognised application of blockchain technology. Marx sees them as one component of a broader transition towards assets that are issued, held and transacted on-chain.<\/p>\n
A New Lever for Private-Bank Economics<\/p>\n
Most wealth-management growth strategies focus on client acquisition, products expansion and market share. Marx adds another dimension: the cost base, where the scope for further saving through incremental automation is increasingly limited. Digital infrastructure can redesign entire processes, enabling volume to scale without a commensurate increase in operating cost, widening the ‘jaw ratio’ between income and expense growth.<\/p>\n
“The industry has already taken a great deal out of the cost base through conventional automation,” he says. “Digital infrastructure opens a new chapter. If the operating model evolves more fundamentally, the impact on profitability can be substantially greater.”<\/p>\n
Tokenisation can fractionalise assets, broaden participation and facilitate the transfer of ownership beyond conventional market hours. This is particularly relevant to private markets (e.g., private debt \/ equity), where historically high minimum investment thresholds have limited investor access.<\/p>\n
Asia as the Proving Ground<\/p>\n
Marx has long viewed Asia as a proving ground for digital finance. Consumers and institutions are accustomed to digital engagement, while regulators and financial centres have invested heavily in technology-led innovation and development.<\/p>\n
“Asia is already at the forefront of digital development,” he says. “The region embraces new technology, tests it and provides institutions with a practical environment in which to learn before a roll-out for broader adoption.”<\/p>\n
Singapore represents one half of Sygnum’s founding heritage, a leading hub for private wealth and financial intermediaries, and a regulated base from which to serve the wider Asian market.<\/p>\n
Selling the Rails, Not a Single Product<\/p>\n
Sygnum serves both institutional partners and direct clients. Its B2B & B2B2C offering provides a (white-label) plug-and-play route for banks, brokers, insurers, fund managers, multi-family offices and EAMs seeking to offer digital assets capabilities through their own channels.<\/p>\n
Sygnum\u2019s products & services comprises custody, execution, staking, lending, structured investments solutions, discretionary mandates, collective investment schemes as well as tokenization behind the institution’s own client experience.<\/p>\n
“A bank should not have to build every component before it can serve a client,” Marx says. “We provide the product and service shelf behind the institution, while allowing it to retain control over the client relationship and distribution channels.”<\/p>\n
Speed is a key part of the proposition. Depending on scope and readiness, Marx states that a Sygnum-supported institution can become operational in around six months or more. By contrast, he has seen internal builds take two to three years, often without certainty of success.<\/p>\n
Having developed the model with Swiss financial institutions, Sygnum is now extending the same platform, operating model and product & services capabilities, adapted to Asia, through Singapore as regional demand, regulation and intermediary capabilities continue to mature.<\/p>\n
Bringing Digital Wealth into the Adviser Relationship<\/p>\n
The proposition is particularly relevant to EAMs and multi-family offices whose clients already hold cryptocurrencies or other digital assets. Regulatory uncertainty, evolving infrastructure and specialist due diligence requirements have historically kept such assets outside many managed portfolios and advisory relationships.<\/p>\n
A regulated, institutional-grade platform can bring these holdings into a more holistic client view, enhancing advice, portfolio oversight and risk management while enabling advisers to service them within a broader wealth-management framework.<\/p>\n
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“Many advisers already know their clients have exposure to digital assets,” he says. “What has been missing is the regulated environment and the infrastructure required to incorporate those assets into a comprehensive wealth-management solution. I see this as a way for advisers to further monetise their clients’ digital-asset holdings within a regulated wealth-management framework.”<\/p>\n
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Direct clients range from digitally native investors seeking institutional-grade custody solutions to traditional investors looking to diversify into digital assets. Corporate clients may also incorporate such asset within their treasury strategies. The platform must therefore accommodate a broad spectrum of knowledge levels, risk appetites and operational sophistication \/ requirements.<\/p>\n
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Key Priorities<\/p>\n
Marx’s agenda for Singapore covers market growth (organic and inorganic), augmentation of capability, and stakeholder education.<\/p>\n
Reproducing the Institutional Model in Asia<\/p>\n
The immediate priority is to adapt Sygnum’s broad Swiss products and services offering, together with its client-segmentation model, to the needs of Asian direct clients, intermediaries and respective regulatory expectations. Singapore is intended to become a strategic foothold, anchoring its regional expansion across Asia, not act as a narrow local outpost.<\/p>\n
Education and Regulatory Engagement<\/p>\n
Sygnum also intends to support investors and intermediary education while maintaining active engagement with regulators on the development of digital-asset services. Marx views robust regulation and specialist expertise as important pillars of Singapore’s position as a leading international financial centre.<\/p>\n
“Building the platform is only part of the task,” he says. “We also need to educate the market and engage constructively with regulators to ensure Singapore continues to develop the expertise required to maintain its standing as a leading financial centre.”<\/p>\n
More Output, with a Human in the Loop<\/p>\n
Automation, end-to-end digitisation and artificial intelligence (AI) lets Sygnum scale more efficiently than a traditional institution, without the proportionate increase in headcount. Nevertheless, staffing levels are expected to grow alongside the client base and market presence.<\/p>\n
“Technology enables us to achieve significantly more with a leaner organisation, but finance will not become a world without people,” he says. “There is still a human in the loop – someone who understands the client, exercises judgement and takes responsibility for decisions and outcomes.”<\/p>\n
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Into the Future<\/p>\n
Convergence Matters More Than Any Single Asset<\/p>\n
Marx sees the convergence of tokenisation, stablecoins and blockchain infrastructure as more consequential than any individual token or exchange-traded fund. Digitally native assets are issued on-chain from the outset, whereas wrapping a conventional asset in tokenised form often leaves the underlying processes dependent on legacy rails.<\/p>\n
A common layer has the potential to connect trading (includes liquidity providers), settlement, custody, corporate actions and collateral management. Realising this vision, however, depends on institutions and networks recognising, integrating and communicating seamlessly with one another. Marx expects such interoperability to take longer than enthusiasts suggest.<\/p>\n
“The breakthrough comes when the assets, the cash, and the post-trade processes can operate on a common layer, when platforms are able to interact without friction with one another, and most importantly when the asset is accepted as collateral throughout” he says.<\/p>\n
Digital Money as the Base Layer<\/p>\n
Stablecoins, tokenised bank deposits and tokenised money-market funds (MMF) are important (like Fidelity\u2019s USD MMF \u2013 FIQL, tokenized by Sygnum) not because they are products in themselves, but because a digital asset ecosystem requires natively digital forms of cash operating on the same infrastructure. Wholesale central bank digital currencies may ultimately contribute to the architecture, albeit with a more restricted institutional parameter.<\/p>\n
In such an environment, an investor could dispose of one digital asset and retain the proceeds entirely on-chain, whether in a stablecoin, tokenised deposit, tokenised money-market instrument or tokenised Treasury instrument, ready for the next redeployment. The objective is not merely tokenised investing, but the creation of a digitally native financial stack in which assets, cash and post-trade processes operate on a common infrastructure.<\/p>\n
“Tokenised money is the base layer,” he says. “Tokenising assets without digitising the cash leg is like building a modern application on outdated infrastructure. The full potential is realised only when assets, cash, collateral and settlement operate natively on a common network, allowing value to move seamlessly without reverting to legacy rails at every step.”<\/p>\n
From Separate Systems to Continuous Markets<\/p>\n
Legacy financial infrastructure fragments trading, settlement and custody across different systems, counterparties and operating hours. Blockchain-based networks offer real-time settlement and 24-hour, seven-day transferability and programmable ownership, while fractional ownership can broaden access beyond large institutions.<\/p>\n
In private markets, tokenisation may reduce investment minimums, but a digital representation alone does not create a functional market. Assets still need distribution, liquidity, interoperability between platforms and recognition within the broader financial ecosystem, including from lenders and custodians.<\/p>\n
“We can tokenise almost anything today,” he says. “The real challenge is creating the network effects around the assets. The game changer is once it can be distributed, financed, pledged and integrated into existing market infrastructure. That is when a token evolves from a digital certificate into a financial asset operating as part of a financial ecosystem rather than an isolated record.”<\/p>\n
Why Regulated Intermediaries Will Remain<\/p>\n
Decentralised finance emerged with a vision of peer-to-peer markets operating without traditional institutional intermediation. Marx does not expect this model to replace the regulated financial system wholesale. In his view, the existing institutions must first become digitised and interoperable; only then can the market identify which intermediaries add genuine value and which primarily serve as friction points within the value chain, ready to be removed.<\/p>\n
Investors may hold substantial wealth in private wallets, but self-custody leaves asset holders responsible for key management, cybersecurity and error recovery. It also raises broader questions around continuity and succession: will future beneficiaries know the assets exist and be able to access them?<\/p>\n
“(Self-)Control has value, but it also carries responsibility,” he says. “Clients increasingly start asking whether they can keep pace with the required level of security, whether a single mistake could permanently impair access to their assets, \u00a0and whether the next generation would be able to recover them. In that context, a regulated custodian can serve as a form of institutional resilience \/ become a form of insurance against those risks.”<\/p>\n
Common infrastructure will reduce the need for certain form of intermediation, particularly where functions are largely administrative. However, Marx expects trusted counterparties to remain relevant where expertise, safeguarding, governance and accountability are required. \u00a0In Marx\u2019s view adoption is likely to accelerate when regulation, institutional participation and client demand increasingly converge.<\/p>\n
“Change often appears \u00a0incremental until a broader shift in market perception appears,” he says. “Once the tipping point is reached, adoption accelerates rapidly. Institutions do not have to transform overnight, but if they fail to see the writing on the wall and fail to progress along the journey, they may ultimately discover that they have missed the train.”<\/p>\n
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Getting Personal with Reto Marx<\/p>\n
Marx was born and raised in the canton of Zurich. Unsure what to pursue after school, he was sent by his father to commercial school, where he developed an interest in finance. He then joined a bank and continued through vocational studies.<\/p>\n
“In my early years, I was a little scattered and did not really know what I wanted to do,” he says. “Commercial school was meant to help me find the next step. Instead, it was where I began to develop a passion for finance.”<\/p>\n
What has kept Marx in finance is the people behind the money: how clients built their businesses, what challenged them and which decisions made the difference. Much of his career has also involved building or reshaping franchises.<\/p>\n
At Credit Suisse, he helped bring private banking to an Australian business that was principally a brokerage operation. Later roles covered the establishment of new client segments and markets, product development, growth, corporate turn-arounds and consolidation. His career before Sygnum also included senior positions at UBS, Bank Sarasin and VP Bank across Singapore and Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
“I have often found myself in greenfield environments \u2013 whether establishing an operation, developing new client segments, entering new markets or guiding an existing business through its next phase of growth,” he says. “Even the most difficult decisions teach you to assess what the organisation has, what it aims to become and where its resources can be deployed most effectively.”<\/p>\n
Asia was a deliberate choice. Marx decided early on that the region would be central to the future and moved to Singapore. His wife is from Malaysia, with Indian and Chinese heritage, while his own background is Swiss. They share three daughters aged 22, 19 and 17.<\/p>\n
The eldest completed a psychology degree at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom (UK) and is currently studying art in Denmark. The middle daughter is studying veterinary science in Melbourne; the youngest attends United World College in Singapore. Marx says proudly that they have inherited strengths from every side of the family.<\/p>\n
Sport is his main release. He enjoys skiing, wakeboarding, paragliding and almost anything else placed in front of him. Trail running became a passion during the Covid period in Hong Kong, despite his school-days view as a sprinter that 100 metres was quite far enough.<\/p>\n
“The more extreme, the better,” he says. “I am not claiming to do any one sport professionally, but give me a racket, a mountain or something new to try and I will probably do it.”<\/p>\n
His preferred ski destination is Engelberg and the Titlis area near Lucerne, renowned for off-piste powder. Quieter moments are spent with his beautiful wife of 23 years, preferably immersed in nature on a great hike.<\/p>\n
Joining Sygnum represents a natural continuation of Marx’s long-standing work with financial intermediaries. He is convinced that finance moves beyond electronic interfaces onto digital native infrastructure. Sygnum\u2019s platform is capable of participating across the full wealth-management value chain, not a single product or niche solution. Sygnum\u2019s position at the intersection of regulated finance and digital-assets innovation, together with its Swiss and Singapore roots, represents the settings in which he had built his life.<\/p>\n
“For me, the move was clear,” he says. “I believe the future of finance is digital and will run on-chain. Sygnum also brings together the two places where I have built my life.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200bDigital assets are usually discussed as a new investment category and viewed by HNWIs as important to preserve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[197149,197153,197161,197157,197148,197152,197160,197156,197150,197154,197162,197158,197147,197151,197159,197155,28,105240,147,530,2122],"class_list":["post-850747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-asia-private-banking","tag-asia-private-banking-news","tag-asia-private-banking-online-training","tag-asia-private-banking-training","tag-asia-wealth-management","tag-asia-wealth-management-news","tag-asia-wealth-management-online-training","tag-asia-wealth-management-training","tag-asian-private-banking","tag-asian-private-banking-news","tag-asian-private-banking-online-training","tag-asian-private-banking-training","tag-asian-wealth-management","tag-asian-wealth-management-news","tag-asian-wealth-management-online-training","tag-asian-wealth-management-training","tag-business","tag-e-learning","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-training"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}