Digital assets are moving beyond their origins as a distinct asset class and becoming part of the infrastructure through which financial institutions manage custody, settlement, tokenisation and cross-border transactions. As banks shift from limited pilot programmes to production environments, the focus is turning to how these capabilities can be integrated into existing systems without weakening institutional control or regulatory compliance.
In a written interview with Korea IT Times, Julian Sawyer, CEO of Zodia Solutions, discusses the convergence of traditional finance and digital asset infrastructure. He explains why banks increasingly want digital asset technology deployed within their own controlled environments and examines the roles of custody, governance, data sovereignty and operational trust in shaping the market’s next phase.
Q1. Digital assets are rapidly evolving from a niche asset class into part of mainstream financial infrastructure. Where do you believe institutional adoption stands today, and what developments over the next five years will define the next phase of market evolution?
Julian Sawyer:
Institutional adoption moved into a new phase in 2025. Major financial institutions transitioned from small pilot programmes into production-grade deployments across tokenisation, stablecoins and digital asset services. The direction is now set - the question is how quickly institutions can scale from initial capability into full production.
The next five years will be defined by the convergence of traditional capital markets with digital asset rails. Rather than operating in silos, institutions will require a single integrated infrastructure layer that powers tokenised real-world assets, tokenised deposits and cross-border settlement. This convergence is what allows banks to run digital asset services under their own licence and governance, within their own environment.
Q2. Many banks are moving beyond pilot projects toward production environments. What are the biggest technological and operational challenges financial institutions still face when integrating digital assets into existing banking infrastructure?
Julian Sawyer:
The biggest hurdle for banks moving to production is that most digital asset technology was built by crypto-native vendors. Governance, audit trails and segregation of duties were retrofitted rather than designed in from the start. As institutions scale, they face growing operational friction around data sovereignty, key management, and connecting into post-trade services without adding risk.
To overcome this, banks need bank-grade infrastructure from a trusted partner. Deploying technology directly into their own operational environments ensures they retain complete control over their private keys and custody, while meeting the standards regulators and boards expect.
Q3. As tokenized assets become more widely adopted, what role will custody, governance, and institutional trust play in determining which financial platforms succeed?
Julian Sawyer:
Adoption depends on infrastructure that mirrors the controls of traditional finance. Global banks cannot run tokenised money market funds or stablecoin settlements on systems that lack segregation of duties and proper audit trails. The platforms winning institutional mandates are those built with these risk frameworks as the foundation - infrastructure proven inside live custody businesses that hold regulatory authorisation and registration across multiple jurisdictions, not retrofitted afterwards.
Institutions require technology that lets them operate these capabilities under their own licence and control. Trust at institutional scale is operational, and the market is consolidating around providers that deliver bank-grade infrastructure and can demonstrate operational depth to match.
Q4. Institutions are moving away from third-party outsourcing and instead building digital asset infrastructure within their own controlled environments. How does this change the way technology providers support traditional finance?
Julian Sawyer:
The shift from outsourcing to internalising rewrites the vendor relationship. Providers can no longer hand over a platform and an integration guide. They need to act as design partners, bringing operational experience from traditional finance and helping institutions design the operating model before any technology is deployed.
Banks need an orchestration layer that embeds business logic, policy engines and settlement access directly into their core architecture. Some institutions have attempted to build these capabilities entirely in-house, and found it a multi-year engineering programme that often stalls under security review. Incorporating established institutional experience has proven more efficient than rebuilding complex infrastructure from scratch, and the institutions moving fastest are the ones that recognised that early.
Q5. Looking ahead, do you believe digital assets will eventually become an invisible layer of financial infrastructure - similar to today's payment networks - or will they remain a distinct asset class? What milestones should the industry reach before that transition becomes reality?
Julian Sawyer:
Digital assets are already moving toward becoming an embedded part of core banking infrastructure. For that transition to complete, the industry needs to move beyond thinking of key management as the answer.
Too many institutions have bought a key management system without understanding the operating model requirements around it. The transition happens when banks run digital assets on infrastructure that connects custody directly to settlement, staking and tokenisation through a single platform, and when those capabilities stop functioning as a separate product line and start operating as part of how value moves.
Q6. Governance frameworks, data sovereignty requirements, and regulatory expectations vary significantly across emerging markets. How do those local constraints shape the offerings being built?
Julian Sawyer:
Capital flows in digital assets only scale when assets can move across jurisdictions, but institutions must still meet highly specific local mandates. Regulatory frameworks are maturing across major markets - the UK, EU, UAE and parts of the US among them - but the operational reality on the ground remains fragmented.
Financial institutions need a platform that is configurable to regional data sovereignty and risk requirements, rather than a rigid global template. That is what Zodia Solutions is built to provide. The infrastructure deploys inside the institution's own environment, allowing banks to adapt policy enforcement and governance controls locally, meeting domestic regulator expectations while maintaining a globally consistent standard of operational security.
Good governance is a system of configurable controls that institutions implement and enforce in ways that reflect their own markets - much like the governance models that have shaped traditional finance for decades.
