Standard Chartered is reportedly considering a restructuring of its majority-owned crypto custodian Zodia Custody that would bring parts of the business inside the bank’s corporate and investment banking division while keeping Zodia as a standalone software-as-a-service platform for digital asset custody.
According to Bloomberg, the U.K. lender plans to fold Zodia’s custody operations into a unit within its corporate and investment bank that already offers similar services. An announcement could come as soon as this month. It is unclear whether Standard Chartered has begun talks with Zodia’s minority investors, which include Northern Trust, Emirates NBD, National Australia Bank and SBI Holdings.
The move comes as Standard Chartered expands its digital-asset footprint. The bank has been exploring a crypto prime brokerage via its venture arm SC Ventures and rolled out institutional crypto trading in summer 2025. Standard Chartered helped launch Zodia in 2020 with Northern Trust; the custodian has since raised external capital and grown across seven offices in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Cointelegraph contacted Standard Chartered and Zodia but had not received a response by publication.
How other big banks are internalizing crypto custody
Standard Chartered’s reported rethink mirrors a broader trend of banks bringing digital-asset custody into regulated banking entities. In February, Morgan Stanley applied for a U.S. de novo national trust bank charter that would allow it to custody certain digital assets and to execute purchases, sales, swaps, transfers and staking services for clients within a bank-regulated framework. In October 2022, BNY Mellon launched a Digital Asset Custody platform in the U.S. enabling selected clients to hold and transfer Bitcoin and Ether alongside traditional assets on a single platform.
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