Hana Bank, South Korea's second-largest bank by assets under management with roughly $500 billion on its balance sheet, issued a $100 million digital bond using Euroclear's Digital Financial Market Infrastructure (D-FMI) platform on September 21, becoming the first Korean financial institution to issue directly through the Brussels-based depository's distributed ledger infrastructure.
According to CoinDesk, the bond settled on a T+0 basis, meaning the transaction cleared the same day it was issued rather than the three to five business days typical of conventional bond settlement. Standard Chartered acted as sole lead manager on the deal, and Citi served as digital notary node and fiscal agent. The issuance was executed under Hana's existing global medium-term note program, which totals $10 billion.
D-FMI connects to Euroclear's existing settlement network, allowing institutional investors to trade the bond through their current Euroclear accounts without adopting new systems — a design meant to lower the barrier to institutional participation in tokenised debt.
A Hana Bank official said the issuance and its T+0 settlement "represent a significant step beyond simply diversifying our funding channels, as they bring blockchain technology into the capital market."
The deal lands ahead of South Korea's broader push toward a tokenised securities framework, which regulators have targeted for full launch in February 2027, giving Hana an early foothold in that shift.
Pricing details were not disclosed. No primary press release from Euroclear, Standard Chartered, or Hana Bank had been published as of this writing; reporting relies on CoinDesk's account.