“We are developing our digital services and custody business. We just applied to BaFin for a license for digital assets,” said bank spokesman David Lynne at the conference.
BaFin is the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, which reports directly to the federal government of Germany;
The bank needs the license for the sake of increasing fee income of Deutsche Bank’s corporate business, the company explains. This reflects efforts by Deutsche Bank’s investment arm, DWS Group, to increase revenue from digital asset offerings.
Deutsche Bank first hinted at plans to offer digital asset storage to customers in late 2020, but at the time the company did not specify when it planned to launch the service;
In March, media reports surfaced that Deutsche Bank’s asset management department was in talks to invest in two German cryptocurrency companies;
Deutsche Bank analysts have long followed the crypto market and periodically make public their forecasts on the development of the situation and the value of major cryptocurrencies.
In April the Vienna subdivision of Raiffeisen Bank in cooperation with Bitpanda stated that they are going to provide their clients with services of cryptocurrency trading.