FIDELITY INTERNATIONAL
Informed by customer demand , Fidelity International has backed itself to create innovative investment products for institutional clients
When we first talk to Fidelity International , it ’ s one of the coldest days of the year so far in Europe , with temperatures in some parts dropping as low as -10 ° C . It ’ s representative of the mood that has swept over the crypto industry in the past year , undergoing a winter of its own . In part that has been affected by unfavourable economic conditions , price volatility , and the collapse of crypto exchange FTX and crypto lender Genesis .
Retaining investor confidence in crypto , then , could be seen as an unenviable task . For Luc Froehlich , Global Head of Digital Asset Solutions at Fidelity International , it was a challenge he wanted to take on , being an early adopter of crypto . Froehlich , who talks to me from his office in Hong Kong , started investing in bitcoin back in 2015 – the early days , so to speak , for a sector that has moved with pace in such a short period of time .
Froehlich has a background as a credit analyst , trader and a fund manager , working for industry heavyweights like
Credit Suisse and Manulife Asset Management . Cryptocurrencies were still an incredibly new frontier at that time . In 2016 and 2017 , shortly after Froehlich took a step into crypto investing , a wave of initial coin offerings ( ICO ) started coming out . Froehlich says , over the next couple of years , he underwent an “ educational journey ” – and senior leaders at Fidelity , which he joined in 2016 , started becoming more vocal about the potential for cryptocurrency .
He believes that a lot has matured in the space since those halcyon days , sparked by the increasing mainstreaming of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin . In the beginning , crypto was the preserve of geeks and tech nerds – but in the last couple of years , it ’ s started to attract the attention of those in the traditional finance space .
“ You have a space that is more professional , with quite a few people coming from a traditional finance background .
“ There is definitely much more of a focus on real-world applications now – how can distributed ledger technology , in particular blockchain , be used to solve day-to-day problems ? That makes it a slightly less exotic space but more interesting in the sense that it ’ s an opportunity to showcase how blockchain is not just a buzzword or a fad .”
Fidelity ’ s strong culture of innovation The part of Fidelity ’ s business headed up by Froehlich focuses on digital assets and only started at the beginning of 2022 , but it was the culmination of a long journey into decentralised assets . Not only was Fidelity seeking to enter the digital assets space , it was striving to future-proof its business by preparing for tokenised securities and central bank digital currencies ( CBDCs ) too . One way it did this was by examining the tokenisation of
“ YOU HAVE A SPACE THAT IS MORE PROFESSIONAL , WITH QUITE A FEW
PEOPLE COMING FROM A TRADITIONAL FINANCE BACKGROUND ”
LUC FROEHLICH GLOBAL HEAD OF DIGITAL ASSET SOLUTIONS ,
FIDELITY INTERNATIONAL
June 2023 | fintechmagazine . com 67