Swissquote is jumping into the business of initial coin offerings. finews.com asked finance chief Michael Ploog what the Swiss online bank is hoping for from crypto.

Michael Ploog, how important is cryptocurrency to Swissquote’s strategy?

We started offering trading in Swiss stocks 20 years ago. Now, we have a cross-asset platform and offices besides Switzerland in Dubai, Hong Kong, London, and Malta, with clients from many countries from different parts of the world. A Chinese client may not buy the same product as a European, just as a young person might not buy the same as their parents.

How big is the blockchain and cryptocurrency trading part of your business?

It was about 2.5 percent last year. But the cross-asset platform, which is where we also offer foreign exchange trading, is a vast supermarket. The key tenet is that when one market is suffering, another may be thriving. And if a client likes one product, we hope to interest him or her in others too.

You began offering cryptocurrency trading last year. How is that going?

We offer trading in five cryptocurrencies right now and plan to expand that, probably by year-end, or the beginning of next year.

What are your targets for that part of your business?

We only disclose targets for the whole business, where we aim to lift pre-tax profit by at least 15 percent on last year. Blockchain and crypto is a new area with a lot of ideas. Not all of them are good, but I’m sure it will have a significant effect on the banking industry in the next five years.

Is Swissquote threatened by the technology developments around blockchain?

No, we do not feel threatened. We see a lot of opportunities in blockchain technology and will continue to develop blockchain-related services.

Are you hiring as a result of the expansion into crypto?

As a digital bank, more than one-third of our staff are engineers. We will keep growing, but do so in line with our growth.

Michael Ploog has been the chief financial officer of Swissquote since the online bank was founded in 1999. He previously worked as an accountant for several big four firms.