Standard Chartered is reportedly weighing a restructure of its majority-owned crypto custodian, Zodia Custody, that would move custody operations into the bank’s corporate and investment banking (CIB) arm while keeping Zodia as a standalone software-as-a-service platform for custody technology.
Bloomberg sources say the U.K. lender may transfer Zodia’s operational custody business into an existing CIB unit that already provides comparable services. An announcement could come as soon as this month. It is not clear whether Standard Chartered has opened formal discussions with Zodia’s minority investors, which include Northern Trust, Emirates NBD, National Australia Bank and SBI Holdings.
The reported reconsideration aligns with Standard Chartered’s recent push into digital assets. The bank has been exploring a crypto prime-brokerage offering through SC Ventures and introduced institutional crypto trading in summer 2025. Standard Chartered co-launched Zodia in 2020 with Northern Trust; since then the custodian has taken on outside capital and expanded to multiple offices across Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Cointelegraph reached out to Standard Chartered and Zodia for comment and had not received a response at the time of publication.
Broader context: several large banks have moved to internalize digital-asset custody under regulated banking entities. For example, in February Morgan Stanley applied for a U.S. de novo national trust bank charter to custody certain digital assets and offer related trading, transfer and staking services 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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