Stephanie Douse 
The crypto-related fund will be the first to be offered by a South Korean bank and would serve primary investment guarantees and retirement pensions.
Kookmin Bank is poised to become the first bank in South Korea to offer regular clients crypto investment products.
On February 21, KB announced the formation of a Digital Asset Management Preparatory Committee to examine product and strategy capabilities for digital assets and AI investment funds. Crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and futures products are expected to be launched by the bank. The investment funds’ risk and compliance issues will also be assessed by the committee.
Honggun Kim, the bank’s Head of Index Quant Management, confirmed the plans in an official statement. “We will launch a virtual asset-themed equity fund, for example,” he stated. We also intend to publish journals.”
According to the research platform MacroTrends, KB Financial Group, the country’s largest net profit, had around $520 billion in total assets as of September 2021.
The current plan is to develop a crypto investment index fund and a fund that employs an Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO), also known as outsourced investment management, to give primary investment guarantees. The OCIO fund can be used for retirement pensions as well.
Grayscale and Fidelity Asset Management are two OCIOs to examine, both of which provide crypto investment funds. Last December, Fidelity Canada launched a spot Bitcoin ETF, even though such a product has yet to be licensed in the United States.
KB is responding to a market that has become increasingly receptive to crypto and nonfungible token (NFT) investments by introducing a new investment fund for its customers. Shinhan Bank, a close competitor, has dedicated an entire portion of its mobile banking app to assisting customers with NFT collections on Klaytn, the country’s top blockchain.
Following in the footsteps of Singaporean megabank DBS, KB has announced new retail crypto investing products. On February 14, DBS Bank CEO Piyush Gupta said the bank would work to scale its crypto activities in 2022.