Fineqia International today announced that it has made a cash investment for an equity stake in Nivaura, which recently demonstrated the world’s first cryptocurrency denominated bond issuance that was cleared, settled and registered entirely on a public blockchain.
Fineqia joins New York-based Digital Currency Group (DCG) in Nivaura’s first institutional financing round. Allen & Overy, the world’s eighth largest law firm by revenue according to American Lawyer, also invested in Nivaura. Both received minority equity interest in Nivaura.
Fineqia will be able to deploy the world’s first fully automated bond issuance and administration platform utilizing Nivaura’s technology at significantly lower cost than existing channels.
Issuers will be able to structure, execute and administer legally enforceable bond contracts using public blockchain infrastructure. To meet current client requirements, the bonds will be denominated in fiat currency. The cash held in Nivaura’s client money accounts will, however, be tokenized to enable blockchain clearing and settlement.
“We’re delighted to back Nivaura, whose pioneering technology can work with existing capital markets infrastructure to optimize it, minimize costs and drive transparency,” said Fineqia CEO Bundeep Singh Rangar. “Nivaura’s founder Avtar S. Sehra is a leading expert on fintech, cryptocurrency, and blockchain in Europe and has worked closely with Fineqia for several years.”
Fineqia will take advantage of its recent shareholding in PremFina to issue secured premium finance debt securities. Premium finance eliminates the financial strain of lump-sum upfront payments for insurance, thereby promoting financial inclusion within the insurance industry.
Nivaura is a U.K. fintech start-up founded in July 2016 that is building a new way for automated issuance and administration of financial instruments under the oversight of the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority. A key element of Nivaura’s technology is its Legal Markup Language (LML), which enables the conversion of standard legal contracts into machine-readable formats.
Fineqia provides a U.K. regulated platform and associated services to support and administer debt and equity security issuances such as corporate mini-bonds.