Ownera and Zodia Solutions have agreed to combine their institutional digital-asset infrastructure to support tokenised collateral transactions across multiple blockchains and legacy financial systems.
Announced in London on September 2, the collaboration will connect Ownera’s multichain orchestration technology with Zodia Solutions’ institutional risk-management and post-trade controls through the Open Collateral Network.
The companies aim to address one of the main obstacles preventing tokenised collateral from progressing beyond trials: financial institutions must be able to move assets across different ledgers while retaining the internal controls that govern conventional collateral transactions.
Under the arrangement, Ownera’s routers will carry collateral instructions among counterparties, custodians, lenders and cash providers. The system is designed to operate across whichever blockchain, distributed ledger or conventional infrastructure each institution uses.
Zodia Solutions will provide the control layer applied before settlement. This includes compliance screening, digital-asset policy enforcement, credit and limit checks, asset locking, reconciliation and reporting within an institution’s own operating environment.
The structure is intended to allow a financial institution to connect once to Ownera’s FinP2P network instead of developing a separate technical integration for every new blockchain or ledger.
Tokenisation moves from issuance to infrastructure
Much of the early institutional tokenisation market focused on issuing digital representations of bonds, funds and other financial assets. The emerging challenge is how those assets can move reliably between institutions and perform functions already embedded in capital markets.
Collateral is central to derivatives, securities financing and other wholesale transactions. Banks and asset managers must frequently transfer eligible assets in response to margin calls, including across jurisdictions, time zones and settlement systems.
Fragmented infrastructure can delay those movements and require institutions to reconcile information across several systems. Tokenisation may shorten the process, but faster settlement does not remove the need for credit controls, asset eligibility checks, regulatory screening and accurate transaction records.
The Ownera–Zodia model separates these functions into two connected layers. Ownera manages communication and transaction orchestration across networks, while Zodia enables each institution to apply its own governance rules before an instruction reaches settlement.
This approach does not require participating institutions to agree on a single blockchain. Instead, the infrastructure is designed to connect different ledgers while preserving the policies and approval procedures of each institution.
Craig Perrin, chief commercial officer at Zodia Custody, said institutions already operate under established rules governing how collateral can move. He said the collaboration would apply comparable controls to digital assets through infrastructure operating under each institution’s own licence, governance and brand.
Natasha Benson, chief operating officer and head of Tokenized Capital Market Solutions at Ownera, said collateral transactions take place between institutions using different systems. She said interoperability must therefore extend across the ledgers selected by each participant rather than requiring the entire market to adopt one network.
Production will require operational evidence
The collaboration reflects the institutional market’s growing emphasis on interoperability and operational control. Industry experiments have demonstrated that tokenised assets can support faster collateral transfers, but production deployment also requires reliable identity management, legal enforceability, asset segregation, data consistency and post-trade reconciliation.
The commercial significance of the partnership will depend on its implementation by regulated institutions. Neither company disclosed participating banks, an implementation schedule or expected production volumes in the announcement.
Further evidence will also be needed on how the infrastructure handles transaction failures, conflicting ledger states, privacy requirements and operational responsibility when a collateral instruction crosses several networks and service providers.
These issues are becoming more important as conventional securities, tokenised assets and digital cash begin to operate within connected market structures. The ability to preserve institutional controls across those systems could determine whether tokenised collateral develops into durable financial infrastructure rather than remaining confined to limited trials.
Ownera says its FinP2P infrastructure currently orchestrates more than $5 billion in monthly trading activity among counterparties and regulated service providers. That figure was provided by the company and was not independently verified in the announcement.
