Société Générale Securities Services, a subsidiary of the French banking group Societe Generale, employs 550 staff in Luxembourg and offers, among other things, support services for the cross-border distribution of funds. Photo: Matic Zorman/Maison Moderne

Société Générale Securities Services, a subsidiary of the French banking group Societe Generale, employs 550 staff in Luxembourg and offers, among other things, support services for the cross-border distribution of funds. Photo: Matic Zorman/Maison Moderne

The forced march of the custodian bank and securities custody industry into the world of digital assets is accelerating. Société Générale is now expanding its securities services offering to include cryptoassets.

More and more investors are looking to integrate cryptocurrencies into their portfolios. Based on this trend, Société Générale Securities Services has started offering services to asset management companies looking to develop professional fund ranges based on cryptocurrencies and digital assets.

With this announcement, SGSS is shaking things up a bit in the European custodian industry landscape. Indeed, SGSS is now offering asset managers the role of fund custodian, valuator and liability manager. Therefore, SGSS’s goal is to provide a simplified solution to funds that wish to enrich their portfolio with a cryptoasset investment universe.

A new service for funds

The service offered by SGSS has already been adopted by the French management company Arquant Capital SAS. Arquant has just opened a range of professional funds specialising in crypto-currency investments. The management company offers a range of products based on bitcoin, ether and derivatives.


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With 22 locations worldwide, SGSS employs around 4,000 people. Its services include clearing, custody, depositary banking, fund administration, liquidity management and transfer agency. SGSS provides these services to financial institutions, brokers, management companies, insurance companies and corporates.

In Luxembourg, SGSS has 550 employees and specialises in cross-border fund distribution support and hedge fund services. Its clients in the Luxembourg market are mainly asset managers and institutional investors.

Changes in sight in the local market

The Luxembourg segment of transfer agent, custodian and securities custody services continues to be a unique competitive feature of the Luxembourg market. It is not only one of the country’s historical industries, but also one of the only European financial centres with so many players specialising in these areas. However, the growing interest of private and institutional investors in digital assets and the emergence of new solutions based on blockchain technology are forcing the historical players in the marketplace to initiate rapid changes. A move in this direction by a player the size of SGSS is therefore not insignificant.

This is not the first time that the Societe Generale Group has made news in the cryptoasset world. Its subsidiary Forge aims to bring together “capital markets and digital assets”, offering both digital asset structuring services, the issuance of tokenised securities and banking services backed by the group’s traditional range of services.

Originally published in French by and translated for Delano