Zodia Custody was developed by SC Ventures and Northern Trust, and incubated within Ventures Lab by SC Ventures, after Standard Chartered found no custodian with satisfactory risk and compliance standards. “The bank was looking for a provider that would meet its requirements,” said Deborah Algeo, managing director for Hong Kong and Singapore. “There wasn’t anything available in the market.”

Five years on, this bank-origin DNA has become Zodia’s differentiator as it builds the governance and infrastructure that regulated institutions need to safely participate in tokenised markets. “Our solution looks at what a large, regulated institution would require to enter digital assets — everything from risk, compliance, governance and security, but at a very high standard.”

Formally launched as a joint venture between Standard Chartered and Northern Trust in 2020, Zodia has since added SBI Holdings, National Australia Bank and Emirates NBD as shareholders. Its offerings span institutional-grade custody, settlement infrastructure and white-label technology enabling banks to deploy regulated digital-asset services. More than a custodian, Zodia now seeks to operationalise compliance and governance for traditional financial firms entering tokenisation.

That institutional approach has enabled Zodia to expand within some of the world’s most tightly supervised markets, including the UK, Luxembourg, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia. “We work directly with regulators and the ecosystem in those markets,” Algeo said. “Our technology, risks and controls are adaptable to different policies in those jurisdictions.”

From technical utility to fiduciary infrastructure

Having built the infrastructure and regulatory foundations, Zodia’s priority is to embed those standards into the daily operations of the institutions it serves. The firm’s white-label model wraps its technology and operations into a turnkey platform that banks can deploy within their own regulated entities. “That’s exactly what we do with Standard Chartered in many different locations,” Algeo noted. “We’re working with several other banks on deploying that too.”

Algeo added that Zodia’s shareholder base reinforces its institutional focus. “We have banks that sit on our board table, banks that sit on our cap table,” she said. “They believe in our product because they’re actually going to market with it.”

Each client’s risk appetite and policies differ, and Zodia’s platform reflects those variations in its system configuration. “No regulated entity is going to do exactly the same thing when it comes to controls,” she said. “We build that into our platform, so that you can move those levers depending on your risk appetite or policy within different jurisdictions.”

Drawing on her experience leading digital-asset initiatives at National Australia Bank, Algeo added that organisational alignment is key. “You have to assemble technology teams, risk and compliance functions that understand traditional finance but also digital assets, and then bring those two together.”

Zodia supports this process through subject-matter-expert workshops and implementation planning, positioning custody as “an operational transformation activity that’s happening within the organisation.” Algeo stressed that operations are “one of the most challenging things for institutional adoption,” rather than “just the technology.”

Regulation drives design

Globally, regulatory scrutiny of custody has intensified under Singapore’s Payment Services Act and Hong Kong’s virtual-asset service provider (VASP) regime, both mandating stronger segregation and governance standards. Meanwhile, Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation introduces explicit liability provisions for custodians under Title V, reinforcing institutional expectations around safekeeping and auditability.

Algeo observed that regulators now regard the separation of trading and custody as “both a regulatory and a security item.” For Algeo, regulation is not a constraint but a blueprint that defines how institutional digital-asset markets must evolve. Zodia’s custody model aligns with these mandates — combining real-time cold-key management, hardware security modules (HSMs) and dual control so that no single individual can execute a transaction.

“We use technology to do that, which removes much of the conduct risk,” Algeo said, noting that Zodia’s cold-wallet infrastructure remains air-gapped even as transactions are processed in real time.

Zodia also applies operational rigour to partner oversight. Algeo notes the firm conducts enhanced due diligence on partners it works with, adhering to bank-level governance and processes. “You have to know who you’re working with, that they meet your same standards, and that you can evidence that.”

That same regulatory alignment underpins how Zodia engages with policymakers across Asia — markets where supervisory regimes are evolving at pace but with growing openness to institutional digital assets.

Connecting tokenisation’s moving parts

Algeo highlighted Asia as a key growth region for Zodia’s model, with institutional engagement accelerating as banks explore how to participate safely in digital assets. “You’re seeing banks come to events like TOKEN2049 asking not if they should participate in digital assets, but how — what the right approach looks like, who the best providers are, and how to work safely with regulators.”

According to Algeo, as institutions move from pilots to live issuance, custody becomes central to how tokenised products are managed. “You’ve got to be able to connect issuance platforms and custody,” she said. “You’ve got to have those links between tokenised products and where they’re held, and how that integrates into the regulatory framework.”

To support clients, Zodia collaborates with partners such as Libeara — launched by Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures to enable tokenised government bonds and funds — and Tokeny, a Luxembourg-based security-token platform. “Part of [the tokenisation value stream] is about tokenising the asset itself, which you then hold on Zodia Custody and can distribute from other partners,” Algeo explained. “It’s about making sure that all the controls and safeguards that exist in traditional finance carry over into digital assets.”

Scaling securely through stablecoins

Stablecoins are fast becoming a catalyst for institutional engagement, according to Algeo, who called them her “word of the year.” She noted that regulatory clarity in markets such as Hong Kong is accelerating their adoption as a bridge between payments and tokenised assets.

She described this evolution as part of a broader convergence between payments and tokenised real-world assets (RWA). “It starts with the payment being tokenised and then the asset being tokenised,” she said. “The conversations are whether banks start with the payment side or the tokenised RWA side, but ultimately that’s the objective — that full-tokenisation value stream.”

As transaction volumes increase, the operational demands on custody also rise. “Wherever you have an on-chain asset, you need to hold that safely and securely,” she said. “You need a regulated entity to hold it. Run to a vault and pull out a hardware — that becomes a very high-risk process from a conduct perspective."

“It will be really important to get tokenisation to scale, but safely,” she added. The broader trend, she noted, is growing confidence among major financial institutions.

“We’re starting to see the organisations that influence the market that we trust entering in, and that’s opening the gateways for mass participation.” As the regulatory perimeter expands, institutions are redefining what digital-asset custody means — not just safekeeping, but the operational foundation for a tokenised financial system.