London—Standard Chartered’s move to acquire the custody business of Zodia Custody marks more than a consolidation of digital asset services. It signals a broader shift in institutional finance: banks are no longer treating digital assets as a peripheral custody product, but as part of the operational infrastructure needed for tokenisation, stablecoins and on-chain financial services.
Zodia Solutions, an institutional digital asset infrastructure platform, is expected to be formed following the completion of Standard Chartered’s acquisition of Zodia Custody’s custody business. Julian Sawyer, currently CEO of Zodia Custody, will be appointed CEO of the new entity.
The transaction remains subject to regulatory approvals, definitive documentation and customary closing conditions. Once completed, Zodia Custody’s regulated custody activities will be integrated into Standard Chartered’s existing digital asset custody business within Financing and Securities Services. The infrastructure platform business currently operating inside Zodia Custody under the name “Solutions” will be separated and transferred into Zodia Solutions under SC Ventures.
The restructuring reflects a maturing phase in the digital asset market. In 2025, banks and financial institutions began moving beyond pilot projects into active deployment, driven by demand for stablecoins, tokenisation and institutional-scale digital asset services. But the infrastructure available to many regulated institutions has often been built from crypto-native models rather than banking-grade governance, controls and operational depth.
Zodia Solutions is being positioned to address that gap. Rather than offering custody alone, the platform will provide technology, infrastructure and professional services that allow financial institutions to design, launch and scale their own digital asset services. Standard Chartered will remain a shareholder, strategic partner and client of Zodia Solutions, and its digital asset custody activities will continue to run on the platform.
The company said Zodia Solutions will focus on three areas: design, deliver and grow. The design phase will cover strategy, operating model development, governance frameworks and infrastructure planning. The delivery phase will include custody infrastructure, key management, transaction orchestration, policy enforcement, risk and compliance tooling, and operational monitoring. The growth phase will connect institutions to a curated partner network covering services such as staking, off-venue settlement, tokenisation, collateralised lending, liquidity access and payment rails, subject to regulation and partner arrangements.
Sawyer said Zodia Solutions was being built inside a regulated custodian, with governance, controls, segregation of duties and risk management embedded into its design. He said the platform would work with institutions from strategy through live operations, helping them define operating models before deploying infrastructure and expanding into revenue-generating services.
Alex Manson, CEO of SC Ventures, said the new structure creates a commercial opportunity as financial institutions seek capabilities to operate in digital assets, beginning with trusted custody and expanding into broader infrastructure for adoption and scale.
The planned separation also shows how large financial groups are reorganising their digital asset strategies. Custody remains foundational, but the competitive frontier is moving toward infrastructure that can connect compliance, governance, risk management and product expansion within regulated financial institutions.
For Standard Chartered, Zodia Solutions gives the bank a way to support the next phase of institutional digital asset adoption while keeping custody within its regulated business. For the broader market, the move suggests that digital assets are becoming less about standalone crypto services and more about the architecture through which banks may build future financial products.
