Zodia Custody
Zodia Custody is a custodian of digital assets for banks, asset managers and other institutional clients, with its headquarters in London. Standard Chartered, Northern Trust, SBI Holdings, National Australia Bank and Emirates NBD back the company, which keeps the private keys of client assets in air-gapped cold wallets and offers no services to retail investors.
Its European entity, Zodia Custody (Europe) S.A. in Luxembourg, has been authorized as a crypto-asset service provider under MiCA since 12 December 2025. Clients also use the Interchange network to trade and borrow on connected venues while their assets stay in custody, and they can stake coins such as ether from their segregated wallets.
Zodia Custody and Standard Chartered
Zodia Custody lists five backers on its website: Standard Chartered, Northern Trust, SBI Holdings, National Australia Bank and Emirates NBD. The company describes itself as an institution-first custodian that brings the controls of a bank to digital assets, and it accepts only institutional and professional investors as clients.
The company works around the clock from five offices in London, Luxembourg, the UAE, Sydney and Hong Kong. According to the company, a team of more than 150 employees serves clients in over 15 jurisdictions.
Custody with cold storage and HSMs
Client assets sit in air-gapped cold wallets, and the private keys are stored in hardware security modules in secured data centers. Clients set the entitlement workflows and approval policies that run inside these modules, and the holdings of each client are kept apart with no co-mingling of funds. Withdrawals are possible 24 hours a day, and an insurance program with crime and cyber policies covers the assets.
Zodia Custody holds SOC 1 and ISO 27001 certifications for its operations. In Europe the company is custodian for ABTC, the physically backed bitcoin ETP of 21Shares, which can offer its investors instant withdrawals as a result.
Interchange and off-venue settlement
Interchange is the settlement network that Zodia Custody runs for its institutional clients. Clients trade, borrow and lend on connected venues while their assets remain in custody until the point of settlement, which limits the counterparty risk of holding funds on an exchange. A legal trust structure keeps the assets insolvency remote, and an on-chain engine settles trades as delivery versus payment.
Venues on the network include Bybit, Deribit, LMAX Digital, Hidden Road and BlockFills. The on-chain lender Maple joined Interchange on 14 September 2026, so institutions can borrow against bitcoin, wrapped bitcoin, ether and Solana while the pledged collateral stays in their own segregated Zodia Custody wallet for the term of the loan.
Upcoming fintech and finance events in Europe
Staking from the custody wallet
Institutions can stake digital assets directly from their segregated custody wallets, and the rewards are collected and redeployed automatically. For ether, Zodia Custody supports the Pectra upgrade with faster withdrawals and validator consolidation, and the offer also covers DOT and BNB. Slashing insurance is available through some of the staking providers that the custodian works with.
The Pectra launch for asset managers ran with two partners, the validator operator Blockdaemon as one and the institutional staking provider Twinstake as the other.
Licenses in Luxembourg, the UK, ADGM and Hong Kong
Zodia Custody (Europe) S.A. is authorized as a crypto-asset service provider by the Luxembourg CSSF under number N00000006 and is also licensed as a payment institution. A CASP license of this kind can be passported to the other member states of the European Union.
In the UK, Zodia Custody Limited is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority under the Money Laundering Regulations, with firm reference number 928347. The subsidiary in Abu Dhabi, Tungsten Custody Solutions Ltd, holds a permission of the ADGM FSRA, which the regulator extended to the custody of digital securities in October 2026. The first focus of that extension is tokenized money market funds, and in Hong Kong the group holds a trust license (TCSP) from the Companies Registry.
Chief executive and management
Richard Clark is chief executive of Zodia Custody, as the company stated in its announcement of the ADGM approval in October 2026. The management page of the company describes him as a revenue leader with a track record in capital markets.
Anoosh Arevshatian is chief product officer and has a background in risk management and product development. Sophie Bowler leads risk and compliance as chief risk and compliance officer of the company.
London office and other locations
The registered office of Zodia Custody Limited is at 1st Floor, 6 Eastcheap in the City of London, EC3M 1AE, and the company is registered in England and Wales under number 12418687. Zodia Custody (Europe) S.A. is entered in the Luxembourg Trade and Companies Register under B289268, and the other offices are in the UAE, Sydney and Hong Kong.
Zodia Custody and Finance Loop
Banks and asset managers in Germany that plan their own custody offer face the same decisions on cold storage, settlement and staking, with the rules for crypto custody in Germany as the domestic reference. Finance Loop members discuss custody models and MiCA licenses at its events on investment and digital assets.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the institutional use of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.