Irina Kessel, Product Owner of Digital Assets and 24/7 Banking Products at Avaloq, argued that banks should treat crypto assets as a strategic opportunity rather than a niche product, with client demand already visible while banking channels remain limited.
Speaking on the second day of Nexus Luxembourg 2026 at Luxexpo on 11 June, Kessel started the keynote by asking the audience how many had invested in or traded crypto assets. A visible portion of attendees raised their hands. When she then asked how many had done so through a bank, no hands were visible.
“Pretty much nobody,” she remarked, underlining her point. “That’s exactly the opportunity I would like to talk today, because as we can see, the demand is there, but the banking channels are lacking.”
Banks face client demand
Kessel pointed to recent studies showing that around 60% of investors had already invested in crypto, while around 50% of high-net-worth individuals were moving away from advisers that did not offer crypto assets.
“If I would be a bank, I would consider to really focus on the crypto assets as a potential revenue driver,” she stated. She added that crypto assets could also help banks show “innovative spirit” and build new products.
“Ignoring crypto is possible, but now it’s a strategic risk,” Kessel cautioned.
Operational hurdles remain
Kessel said banks that decide to offer crypto assets still face several internal challenges. “You would need to build out the internal knowledge that potentially you would be lacking, especially in the beginning,” she said. She added that banks would also need operational insight, custody set-up, regulatory approval and a core banking system able to handle digital assets. “You would need to deal with a core banking system that usually oriented at the traditional assets,” she noted.
According to Kessel, a crypto assets offering touches most departments of a bank, including IT, back office, front office, compliance and risk. “Here the key partner would be very helpful,” she said, adding that Avaloq could “break down the complexity”, propose a working operational model and share experience to address uncertainty. “Uncertainties, it’s what the most scary in any innovation,” she added.
From core banking to 24/7 crypto
Kessel said Avaloq’s crypto assets work began more than five years ago with updates to its core banking system. “We modelled the assets, we made sure that we can represent 18 decimal points of Ethereum in the core banking system,” she explained.
But Avaloq then had to address “crypto is actually 24/7” Kessel said. She explained that Avaloq decided to “decouple the architecture” and build a standalone application that is natively integrated with the core banking system while also handling blockchain-related events. “It’s not just proof-of-concept, it’s actually product that is live operational since already 2022,” she stated.
Crypto through banking channels
“Your clients should be able to log into the banking and be able to execute the usual trading operation or transfer without even thinking that it’s actually a blockchain related asset,” she said. At the same time, bank users should remain in control through reporting, exception management and audit and risk workflows.
From a functional point of view, she said banks would most likely start with trading, followed by settlement with brokers and asset transfers for clients that already hold crypto assets. She added that the core banking system should be updated at every step, including pre-trading checks, post-trading bookings, reconciliation, documents and client statements.
Stablecoins as a subset
Kessel described stablecoins as a subset of crypto assets that solve a specific problem by reducing settlement friction in payment flows. “If you imagine 24/7 cross-border payments without the need of correspondent chains, that’s basically what stablecoins can offer,” she said. She argued that “stablecoins are just a little subset that follows exactly the same rules. It is pretty much the same asset type and using the same infrastructure, so really nothing new there.”
Kessel said Avaloq’s platform sits “in the middle” of the crypto assets ecosystem, and “we are not doing everything by ourselves, we actually are orchestrating it mainly,” she said. She added that the platform offered business workflows, exception handling and reporting through what Avaloq calls a crypto desk, a web interface for bank users.
Kessel concluded that banks no longer face a question of whether crypto assets will matter.
“It’s not anymore a question of if, it’s a question of who,” she said. “Who will get the revenue, who will retain the clients, and who will be the trusted bridge between digital assets and traditional banking.”
