Private Swiss Bank Rolls Out New Premium Crypto Trading Service

Private Swiss bank Maerki Baumann’s new crypto trading service shows there’s a growing market for providing premium execution for an institutional or wealthy clientele.

The entity promised its new crypto trading and custody service would provide clients with the best trading experience in a blog post last week.

“The trading orders placed with Maerki Baumann are directed to professional crypto brokers and the world’s largest and most liquid crypto exchanges via proven partner companies,” Maerki Baumann announced. “This ensures that transactions are carried out quickly and with a narrow trading range between the buy and sell price (spread).”

Maerki Baumann’s clientele includes institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs). The bank has also offered corporate accounts for qualifying crypto businesses ever since it first made its entry into the space in April 2019.

Regulated by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), the new offering is set to go live sometime this month. Starting with bitcoin (BTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), XRP (XRP), litecoin (LTC) and ether (ETH), the bank said it will gradually expand its list of supported assets based, in part, on client feedback.

But the takeaway here is premier crypto trading services, to a select, exclusive clientele, is a growing and lucrative market. Just last month, FalconX – a company offering best trade execution to institutional and professional clients with a minimum $10 million in assets under management (AUM) – raised more than $17 million in pre-seed and seed round funding.

Reading through the description, FalconX’s offering sounds near-identical to Maerki Baumann’s: Both are hooked up to the order books from multiple crypto exchanges, giving clients an overview of the market that allows them to transact at the best available price and with minimal slippage.

And they aren’t the only ones. Coinbase, Genesis Trading (CoinDesk’s sister company), and BitGo have all made plans to become prime brokers – a type of fixer that provide specialized trading services for institutional investors, including best trade execution.

Maerki Baumann has already said its new crypto trading and custody offering may just be the start. It wants to offer some of its private banking products to its crypto clients as well as launch a new crypto investment service, which could possibly include opportunities to invest directly in selected blockchain companies.

CoinDesk reached out to Maerki Baumann to comment on whether it thought its newly launched crypto trading service had any rivals to speak of. We hadn’t received a response by press time.