AXA Investment Managers (AXA IM), in collaboration with Société Générale-Forge, announced that it has completed its first market transaction based on blockchain infrastructure.
Through its fixed income platform, AXA IM has purchased from Société Générale €3 million ($3.4mn) of “unsecured” bonds issued by the European Investment Bank (EIB) in the form of “security tokens” on the public blockchain Ethereum, on behalf of AXA France.
Laurence Arnold, head of Innovation Management and Strategic Initiatives at AXA IM, said in a statement: “Blockchain can have a disruptive power for asset management processes, as part/or the entire asset management value chain could benefit from this technology over the long term. We believe this could improve the customer experience by accelerating the treatment of financial transactions and facilitating the exchange and storage of data.
Arnold added that the transaction is part of AXA’s innovation journey as it carries out tests in a changing ecosystem, discovering new techniques and new markets.