Huobi, a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange giant, will be diving into asset management waters thanks to the licenses the company managed to secure recently. The global conglomerate, currently listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, has announced that it had secured two distinct licenses from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC).

The company was granted a Type 4 and Type 9 asset management license on Jul. 31, which will now enable the company to both act as an advisor on securities and provide asset management services to its clients in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission granted the license to Huobi Asset Management Hong Kong Limited, an asset management subsidiary of Huobi Technology Holdings Limited, the global conglomerate that owns and operates the Huobi exchange. 

The company is yet to start doing any business related to asset and fund management in Hong Kong. Nonetheless, Huobi has laid out detailed plans on how they want to tackle the newly opened market. Local reports have indicated that the company doesn’t plan on spending too many resources on retail investors—Huobi Asset Management will focus on providing securities consulting and asset management services to professional investors. 

Elaine Sun, the compliance director at Huobi Tech, said that the licenses market a good start for the company to provide professional asset management services in Hong Kong. She said that the newly formed asset management arm of the company is led by a team of highly experienced professionals with extensive knowledge in the blockchain industry. This, she explained, will enable the company to bridge the gap between traditional and virtual asset class investments and offer integrated solutions to the professional investors they service. 

This is a major move for Huobi, whose popularity as a crypto brokerage has been growing with institutional investors. Earlier in July, in a report jointly revealed by IOSG and Huobi, the company reported that it had over 15 million users, with the daily active units (DAU) exceeding 180,000. At the time when the report was published, over half of the transaction volume on Huobi’s exchange platform came from institutional clients. The huge saturation of Huobi’s trading volume with institutional money is a result of a huge increase in the number of institutions that have chosen Huobi as their designated crypto trading platform. The company’s report noted that between the fourth quarter of last year and the first quarter of this year, the number of institutional clients on Huobi increased by more than 100%. 

When compared to Binance, who many believe is now one of Huobi’s fiercest competitors, these numbers look even better. Earlier this year, Binance also disclosed the rate of growth both in retail and institutional clients the platform has seen. However, the total number of institutional customers on Binance increased only by 47.4% between the first quarter of this year and the fourth quarter of last year.