It’s a pleasure to introduce our new COO, Marty Jetton, to the Hex Trust community. Marty has substantial pedigree and decades of experience in traditional finance, custody, and the blockchain world - and we’re delighted to bring him on board.
I’ve spent my professional career thus far in the Asian financial markets, having built and managed regional risk management teams in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo for The Chase Manhattan Bank and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. In addition to working from the Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo offices, I’ve travelled extensively across Asia conducting due diligence, operational integration of new business, regulatory facilitation, corporate governance and management. More recently, I was a Co-Founder in Ultifin Ltd., a Blockchain-empowered lending platform targeting a cross-border trade finance product for SME’s.
While we firmly believe that the introduction of Blockchain technology will greatly enhance the trade finance product, especially with respect to mitigating Operational Risk, we also found that delivering an “end product” in this rapidly changing market difficult to deliver without initially having a well-established Blockchain enhanced infrastructure. This is precisely where Hex Trust’s expertise will help the financial markets move forward, and the impetus for my joining forces with the Hex Trust Team.
My Chase Manhattan stint included 3 years managing Chase’s network of sub-custodians across Asia and the Indian subcontinent. I witnessed the inefficiencies in the financial markets and how custodians dealt with the issues. Examples included a custody service transition to a newly appointed custodian in Jakarta that required months of planning to develop and implement an operationally-complex movement of securities in a highly physical environment while identifying and mitigating operational risks associated, explaining to corporate registrars in Dhaka that it was imprudent to maintain official ownership records in a simple filing cabinet, and deciphering the operational risks associated with the broker open outcry system around a single blackboard in the Nepal Stock Exchange.
As the equity markets moved from a decentralized physical environment to a dematerialized central depository system during the 1990’s, I was a huge proponent of the gradual developments across the region, as I recognized the efficiencies and risk reduction involved. As we are now on the verge of experiencing yet another substantial change in the financial markets via distributed ledgers, this is definitely an exciting time to be involved in the technological development and its impact on the custody business.
The traditional custody product has largely been limited to equity shares, bonds, and ancillary services such as securities lending, foreign exchange, etc… While I see the future of custody continuing to facilitate these investment assets, I also envision a tremendous opportunity for other asset types, such as loans, property, and other traditionally illiquid assets, becoming tokenized to foster liquidity and exchange of ownership. These developments will require custodians to develop their product suite far beyond current requirements to one that has the technology to accommodate digital assets and guard against the cybersecurity risks associated.
Want to learn more about Hex Trust and our custodian solutions for digital assets? Reach out: enquiries@hextrust.com
Hex Trust is the Asian leader in enterprise-grade custody for digital assets. Led by innovators from the institutional financial services space, Hex Trust has built a proprietary platform that delivers a modern custody solution for financial institutions, digital asset organizations, and corporations to safely and efficiently operate in the blockchain ecosystem. ZeroKey, a proprietary technology, enables seamless transacting and fast access to assets stored on multiple blockchains, while maintaining the highest levels of security of cold storage solutions. As a registered Trust Company under the Hong Kong Trust Ordinance and holding a Trust or Company Service Provider (TCSP) license under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Ordinance, Hex Trust offers a truly end-to-end digital asset servicing solution. Visit www.hextrust.com to learn more.
