State Street to expand its crypto fund administration capabilities

Through its partnership with Lukka, the firm will offer private funds clients services such as crypto processing and reporting

Financial services provider State Street announced yesterday that through its partnership with crypto asset solutions provider Lukka, it will offer its private funds clients fund administration capabilities for digital and cryptocurrency assets.

State Street Digital’s alternatives lead, Jen Tribush, explained, “As our clients continue to adopt digital assets, such as crypto, we’ve seen increasing interest among investors for institutional quality middle and back-office offerings that support diversified portfolios. Lukka was the ideal partner to help provide these services given their leading position in crypto asset data as State Street continues to add to our growing offering in the digital asset space.”

State Street caters to institutional investors with its investment servicing, management and research, and held $42.6 trillion in assets under custody and/or administration at the end of June 2021. The firm will now offer crypto-related collection, standardisation, enrichment, reconciliation, processing and reporting to its private funds clients.

Last month, State Street launched a new division dedicated to digital finance called State Street Digital to expand the firm’s capabilities to include blockchain, crypto, tokenisation and central bank digital currencies.

State Street also led Lukka’s Series C funding round last December, allowing the digital asset institution to develop software and data solutions to support crypto adoption in traditional businesses.

Lukka CEO Robert Materazzi commented, “Large, traditional funds are rapidly looking to add crypto to their offerings, which leads them to ask their existing, trusted service providers such as State Street for fund administration. State Street was quick to recognize the importance of building capabilities to support crypto assets and we are proud to partner with them as funds quickly look to diversify their portfolios.”

The Lukka product suite includes Lukka Reference Data and Lukka Prime Pricing Data, in addition to a proprietary middle and back office data management solution designed for crypto asset and blockchain data. With the support of these products, State Street clients will now be able to create and manage portfolios in which cryptocurrencies are co-mingled with traditional alternative investments.