South Korea’s largest bank, Kookmin Bank, is set to become the first to provide crypto investment products to investors. In an official release, the bank’s Head of Index Quant Management, Honggun Kim, confirmed their plans.
Following its announcement on February 21, the bank’s investment wing, KB Asset Management, launched a committee on Monday to develop investment strategies to release digital asset products exchange-traded funds (ETFs). It also aims to analyze the issues for the investment funds in case of any risk in compliance. The objective of this Committee lies in being a pioneer in launching digital asset products in South Korea.
As for KB Asset Management, it functions as a part of the KB Financial Group and, in the present day, is revered as the most influential financial Group in South Korea in terms of net profit. According to the research done by MacroTrends, the Group has garnered total assets worth about $520 billion as of September 2021.
Currently, local regulations do not allow South Korean banks to offer cryptocurrency trading services to their customers directly. However, they can still indirectly indulge in crypto services. For instance, KB Bank has an institutional digital asset called KODA that provides solutions for crypto custody.
