(Bloomberg) -- Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, Germany’s biggest federal bank, plans to start offering cryptocurrency custody services in partnership with the Bitpanda exchange. 

LBBW and Bitpanda will offer crypto custody to institutional and corporate clients starting in the second half of 2024, the two companies said in a statement on Monday. 

“The demand from our corporate customers for digital assets is increasing,” said Jürgen Harengel, managing director of corporate banking at LBBW.

German banks and asset managers have become increasingly active in cryptoassets, offering custodial services and developing their own products for the asset class ahead of EU regulations poised to take effect later this year. Deutsche Bank is working on its own digital-asset custody service, while its DWS unit is part of a consortium that’s developing a euro-denominated stablecoin.

LBBW, whose owners include some of the country’s savings banks, the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and the city of Stuttgart, has about €333 billion ($355 billion) in assets.

--With assistance from Stephan Kahl.

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