A three-party deal between Berner Kantonalbank (BEKB), digital equity issuance startup daura, and SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) was announced today.

BEKB, which is 51.5% owned by the canton of Bern, has become a member of the blockchain-based Central Securities Depository (CSD) operated by SDX.

The combination of the three companies enables the issuance, trading and custody of tokenized shares or security tokens, in particular for SME shares.

Indirect relationships already exist between the three parties. Last year, BEKB launched SME|X together with daura. SME|X is an over-the-counter market for digital assets, especially SME stocks, allowing direct retail access to investments. In contrast, SDX has an institutional focus.

In April, daura and SDX announced a relationship to use SDX’s regulated CSD and allow daura-issued security tokens to be traded on the SDX exchange as well as SME|X.

“By integrating the central securities depository (CSD), we enable bank safekeeping of such shares for a wide audience,” said Armin Brun, CEO of BEKB. “SMEs in particular will benefit from this as they will be able to issue their shares digitally from now on and thus attract a broader investor base.”

daura provides a digital share registry and digital meetings, and with these two relationships, a greater attractiveness of SME shares for institutional investors.

“With this partnership, we enable Swiss SMEs to connect their share registry directly to the Swiss financial infrastructure,” said Peter Schnürer, CEO of daura. “This allows shares to be posted directly to investors’ accounts with custodians and traded at the push of a button on a market. With SDX and BEKB, we have two competent partners who understand the requirements of Swiss SMEs and can implement them using innovative technology.”

Meanwhile, the Swiss stock exchange SDX has three other banking members, UBS, Credit Suisse and Zürcher Kantonalbank. It went into production late last year. SDX holds two conventional licenses, one as a CSD and the other as a stock exchange. That is despite Switzerland’s relatively new FinMIA law that allows for a combined trading and custody platform. The EU will test something similar for tokenized securities as part of the pilot DLT regime.