Sygnum, a global digital asset banking group founded on Swiss and Singapore heritage, is scaling its regulated institutional infrastructure under the leadership of Reto Marx, who took over as Chief Executive Officer of Sygnum Singapore on August 1, 2026. Marx brings over 25 years of experience across traditional wealth management, financial intermediaries, products, and risk, focusing on how blockchain infrastructure can support tokenized real-world assets and digital money within a fully licensed environment.
Regulated Digital Infrastructure and Global Licences
Digital assets are increasingly viewed by high-net-worth individuals as a tool for long-term wealth preservation and legacy planning, while tokenized real-world assets offer new avenues for portfolio diversification. Marx emphasizes that the core transformation lies in the underlying infrastructure used to issue, hold, transfer, settle, and use assets as collateral. For private banks and wealth managers, this shift aims to unlock client opportunities while changing how financial services are delivered.
Sygnum operates as a licensed bank in Switzerland and holds both a Capital Markets Services licence and a Major Payment Institution licence in Singapore. The group also maintains a European Union Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation licence in Liechtenstein, alongside regulated presences in Luxembourg and Abu Dhabi.
Expanding the B2B Model in Asia
Marx’s immediate priority is deepening Sygnum’s presence in Asia by replicating the business-to-business and business-to-business-to-consumer model developed in Switzerland. Over the longer term, Marx anticipates that tokenization, digital money, and interoperable blockchain infrastructure will converge into a common financial layer anchored by regulated institutions and human oversight.
Sygnum supplies a ready-made institutional shelf that allows banks and financial intermediaries to connect client channels to custody, execution, staking, lending, and investment capabilities. Implementation timelines for this infrastructure typically take six months or more, compared to two to three years for internally developed solutions. Additionally, external asset managers can use regulated platforms to incorporate clients’ private-wallet holdings into a broader wealth relationship, capturing assets that previously sat outside traditional advisory remits.
Technology, Interoperability, and Human Judgment
Marx identifies Asia as a natural proving ground for digital innovation due to the region’s high receptivity to new technologies, positioning Singapore as a strategic hub for extending Sygnum’s institutional model. While the firm automates processes and integrates artificial intelligence, Marx notes that human judgment, accountability, and client relationships remain central to service delivery.
Interoperability remains a critical threshold for the industry, enabling platforms to transfer assets seamlessly, distribute them at scale, generate liquidity, and recognize them as eligible collateral. Furthermore, while self-custody introduces cyber, operational, and succession risks, Marx expects regulated intermediaries to retain a vital role in asset safekeeping and business continuity even as certain legacy layers disappear.