Standard Chartered plans digital asset custody for Singapore institutions

Standard Chartered plans to offer digital asset custody in Singapore to institutional clients and corporate clients that qualify as accredited investors, extending a business it already operates in several other financial centres.

The bank’s October 8 announcement covers selected cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and tokenised real-world assets. The service remains subject to applicable regulatory requirements. Standard Chartered did not disclose a start date or a list of supported tokens.

The planned offering will sit alongside the Singapore bank’s Financing & Securities Services business. Standard Chartered describes that arrangement as connecting traditional asset servicing, tokenisation and digital custody, so institutional clients can use the bank across more stages of an asset’s lifecycle.

Singapore joins an expansion strategy that the bank says already includes the United Arab Emirates, Luxembourg and Hong Kong. Patrick Lee, its Singapore chief executive and head of ASEAN and South Asia, linked the plan to institutional demand for infrastructure that can move, safeguard and service tokenised assets at scale.

Asset coverage is still to be specified

Cointelegraph asked the bank which cryptocurrencies the service would support and reported that it had not received an immediate response. That leaves the selection criteria and individual asset coverage unresolved in the public announcement. A plan covering a category of assets does not confirm support for any particular token.

The independent report also places the Singapore move alongside Standard Chartered’s May announcement of plans to acquire Zodia Custody’s custody business and separate Zodia Solutions. It describes other parts of the bank’s UAE digital asset operations, including institutional Bitcoin and Ether spot trading and fiat banking infrastructure for CoinMENA.

Those activities show the wider business the Singapore custody plan would complement. They do not establish that Singapore clients can already use the new service or that the UAE product list will carry over to Singapore.

For prospective institutional users, the next material details are the supported assets, launch timing and terms of access. Thursday’s announcement identifies the intended client groups and connects custody to the bank’s existing securities-services business, while leaving implementation dependent on local requirements.