Standard Chartered to Acquire Zodia Custody; Spin Out Zodia Solutions

Standard Chartered has entered into definitive agreements to acquire Zodia Custody, including 100% of Zodia Custody UK Limited, the parent company of its regulated operating entities in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, the United Arab Emirates and Luxembourg.

Post completion, Zodia Custody’s regulated digital asset custody business will be integrated into Standard Chartered’s existing digital asset custody activities within Securities Services. The move will consolidate Standard Chartered’s digital asset custody businesses and will drive value by unlocking revenue synergies, further strengthening the Group’s digital asset capabilities and supporting its ambition to build a unified client offering that integrates both traditional and digital asset securities services for institutional clients, globally.

As part of the transaction, Zodia Custody will separate its digital asset software and professional services business and transfer the assets relating to that business to Zodia Solutions, an independent entity to be established under SC Ventures. Zodia Solutions will continue to provide bank-grade infrastructure to financial institutions, including Standard Chartered, as they launch and scale digital asset services.

tZERO to Provide Broker-Dealer and ATS Services to Temple Digital on Canton

tZERO Group’s tZERO Securities will provide broker-dealer and alternative trading system (ATS) services to Temple Digital Group to power Temple’s tokenised securities trading platform on the Canton Network.

Under the agreement, Temple will support its trading technology with tZERO Securities’ regulated operating infrastructure, including client onboarding and transaction services. This lets Temple bring tokenised securities trading to its clients without building its own broker-dealer and ATS capabilities.

“Institutions building tokenised markets need a regulated operating foundation that can work with their technology and business model,” says Alan Konevsky, CEO of tZERO. “Temple has developed one of the most powerful trading systems on Canton. By bringing our broker-dealer and ATS capabilities to that system, we can help Temple deliver its offering to clients while expanding the reach of tZERO’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service footprint as we focus on powering broker-dealers and other financial institutions at scale.”

Temple’s trading system includes a proprietary matching engine, an RFQ module and a central limit order book for tokenised National Market System (NMS) securities and exchange-traded products. It also includes a front-end user interface and settlement infrastructure designed to support atomic delivery-versus-payment and repurchase agreement settlement on Canton. Temple has executed over $1.6B in volume for Canton and is the largest platform by transaction volume on the network.

“We’re focused on developing regulated, on-chain trading technologies for tokenised assets,” says Evan Varsamis, CEO of Temple Digital Group. “Working with tZERO allows us to combine our solutions with an established broker-dealer and ATS operator, providing the regulated infrastructure needed to support securities on our platform at scale.”

Ripple and BNY Expand Partnership to New Blockchain Use Cases, Including Tokenised Trade Finance

Ripple and BNY have expanded their strategic partnership to broaden institutional digital asset custody capabilities and explore new blockchain use cases, including tokenised trade finance.

Building on BNY’s existing role as the primary reserve custodian for Ripple’s stablecoin (RLUSD), BNY’s Digital Asset Custody platform now supports both XRP and RLUSD. This integration allows eligible institutional clients to securely safekeep, hold, and transfer these digital assets within BNY’s established governance and resiliency controls.

The collaboration aims to transition institutional blockchain use from basic asset issuance to functional application within capital markets. Beyond custody support, the two companies plan to enable BNY clients to directly mint and redeem RLUSD.

Monica Long, President of Ripple, and Carolyn Weinberg, Chief Innovation and Market Transformation Officer at BNY, both emphasise that connecting traditional financial infrastructure with the XRP Ledger (XRPL) will drive greater connectivity, continuous efficiency, and broader adoption across payments, liquidity, and collateral workflows.

A key future focus of this expanded partnership is the advancement of tokenised trade finance on the XRPL to simplify how assets like receivables are managed and distributed. As an initial step, Ripple and BNY are exploring a supply chain finance initiative with the global working capital platform C2FO. This initiative will leverage the XRPL, and its three-to-five second transaction settlement times, to explore new financing models for approved receivables, aiming to expand investor access to the asset class while maintaining trusted customer relationships.

AWS Blog Post Documents Digital Assets CEX Reference Architecture

A blog post authored by three Amazon Web Services technologists documents a reference architecture for a centralised exchange (CEX) for digital assets.

The blog post, titled “Build a digital assets exchange on AWS: A reference architecture“ notes that the reference architecture “aggregates the architectural decisions that recurred across CEX deployments that AWS Solutions Architects have supported in the field.” The blog post documents “how the stack fits together on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS),Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), and Amazon Aurora,” and explains the rationale behind each component choice.

The blog post can be viewed here.

Brickwood Asset Management Selects FinScan for Sanctions and Adverse Media Screening

Brickwood Asset Management has selected FinScan for ongoing sanctions and adverse media screening of issuers held within its funds and their directors. The UK-based independent value equities boutique was founded by a team from UK and international asset managers.

FinScan, an Innovative Systems solution, provides name screening for corporate entities and individuals through a single platform. It supports real-time and ongoing checks against global sanctions lists, politically exposed person data and adverse media.

FinScan says its customisable matching technology improves accuracy and explainability while suppressing duplicate and low-value alerts. The platform produces a documented record of each review.

Claudia Ripley, CEO at Brickwood Asset Management, said: “Screening the issuers we hold against global sanctions is a core regulatory requirement, and ensuring that process is supported by a high-quality screening solution was an important consideration for us. Adverse media screening is a step we chose to take beyond that requirement. FinScan gives us ongoing coverage across both, with a clear audit trail behind every review.”

“We’re delighted to welcome Brickwood Asset Management as a FinScan customer,” said Ben Sher, Chief Revenue Officer of Innovative Systems, Inc. “Asset managers face real scrutiny from allocators and regulators, and Brickwood Asset Management has responded by building best-in-class controls. Adding adverse media screening alongside sanctions, across both their holdings and the directors of those companies, is a considered choice, and one we expect to see more of across the asset management market.”

Smarsh Expands Solutions for AI, Cyber, and Third-Party Risk

Smarsh has announced expanded communications supervision, web archiving, cyber compliance and vendor risk management capabilities for small and mid-sized financial services firms. The changes include planned capture of Claude Cowork interactions within Professional Archive, alongside tools for reviewing communications, monitoring device security and documenting third-party oversight.

Smarsh already captures Claude Enterprise communications through the Claude Compliance API. Planned Cowork support will extend coverage to additional Claude-enabled workflows, bringing those interactions into Professional Archive alongside other regulated communications. Firms will be able to apply retention, supervision, investigation and legal-hold processes to the captured records. The announcement does not specify a release date for Cowork support.

Within Professional Archive, Smarsh Intelligent Supervision combines three artificial intelligence tools. Noise Reduction Agent reduces predictable, low-value alerts; Misconduct Detection Agent identifies behavioural and contextual risk signals beyond keywords and lexicons, including across multilingual communications; and AI Assistant helps reviewers summarise, translate and investigate messages. Smarsh says human reviewers retain responsibility for final supervision decisions.

Further planned enhancements include natural-language search, expanded AI policy coverage and additional queue and search controls. The search capability will translate users’ requests into search criteria they can review and confirm. Smarsh describes these changes as intended to make supervision and investigations more targeted.

Web Archive is expanding support for dynamic and browser-generated content, with a new user interface. The changes aim to help firms preserve searchable records of changing web content. Cyber Compliance assesses high-level security attributes of personal and other unmanaged devices that access sensitive business applications. Smarsh says it evaluates those attributes rather than private content, limiting collection of personal information.

Vendor Risk Management centralises vendor inventories, assessments, risk scores, remediation and reassessment histories. Its Vendor Breach Monitoring capability helps firms identify relevant breaches between scheduled reviews and begin a documented response, supplementing periodic due diligence.

“Small and mid-sized financial services firms need a practical way to understand what is changing across their communications, devices, and third parties without adding unnecessary complexity,” said Kamesh Tumsi, Chief Product Officer at Smarsh.

The announcement combines existing functionality, expanding coverage and planned enhancements. Alongside Cowork capture, natural-language search, expanded AI policy coverage and enhanced queue and search controls remain described as planned capabilities.

Plenitude Joins Skills Compact to Address AI Oversight in Economic Crime

Plenitude has joined the Financial Services Skills Compact as a Supporter, linking workforce development to the skills needed to oversee artificial intelligence (AI) in economic crime controls. The specialist economic crime firm argues that staff must retain the judgement to challenge automated decisions and remain accountable for control effectiveness as technology takes on more work.

The Compact, led by the Financial Services Skills Commission (FSSC), brings government and industry together to address skills gaps across financial services. Supported by HM Treasury, Skills England, TheCityUK and the City of London Corporation, the initiative launched in July 2026. It asks regulated signatories to appoint a senior executive accountable for closing skills gaps and publish progress annually.

For economic crime teams, Plenitude identifies a need to interpret and challenge outputs from AI, machine learning, graph analytics, behavioural analytics and automation. As these technologies take on more detection, triage and analysis, staff must recognise when systems are not working as intended. The firm views skills development and AI adoption as a control issue as well as a workforce issue.

Alan Paterson, Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Plenitude, questioned whether access to AI provides a useful measure of workforce capability: “Most firms can tell you how many of their people have access to AI. Very few can tell you whether those people are getting better at the work they remain accountable for.”

Paterson also raised the challenge of developing expertise when AI performs work through which staff have traditionally learnt. He identified critical thinking, judgement, problem solving and creativity as skills built through practice, and said Plenitude was examining how to develop its next generation of talent as that work changes.

Louise Brett, Plenitude’s CEO, connected skills development to accountability for technology: “Technology will only be as effective as the people who deploy it, challenge it and remain accountable for it.”

The FSSC’s first phase of research for HM Treasury, A Workforce Transformed, examined potential task automation across financial services and pressure on the future supply of highly skilled workers. A second phase considers how the sector should respond, with recommendations due in early 2027.

Vermiculus Launches VeriIndex for Real-Time Index Calculation and Management

Vermiculus has launched VeriIndex, a real-time index calculation and management engine designed to help exchanges and marketplaces develop and operate specialised indices across traditional and emerging asset classes. The platform combines continuous index calculation, corporate action processing and index administration within a single system, initially supporting price-return and total-return indices.

VeriIndex calculates and publishes index values using live market data, with standardised interfaces for distributing results. A next-business-day simulation capability allows operators to assess and correct the impact of scheduled corporate actions and index changes before implementation. Its configurable architecture supports additional calculation methodologies, instrument types and pricing capabilities, enabling operators to expand their index offerings as market requirements evolve.

The system integrates natively with Vermiculus’ VeriTrade exchange trading platform but can also operate independently alongside third-party trading and post-trade infrastructure.

The launch extends Vermiculus’ market infrastructure portfolio as demand grows for indices covering emerging products, including tokenised assets, perpetuals and prediction markets.

DTCC Research Highlights Post-Trade Automation Gaps Ahead of Europe’s T+1 Transition

New research from DTCC and ValueExchange has highlighted significant gaps in European post-trade automation as the industry prepares to move to T+1 settlement in October 2027. The report finds that settlement volumes across Europe increased by 15% in 2025, while failed trades rose by 21%, adding pressure to already fragmented operational processes. Only 33% of European middle offices have invested in automated standing settlement instruction (SSI) storage and exchange, while approximately 68% of firms still rely on some manual trade matching. Just 62% appear prepared for upcoming place of settlement (PSET) requirements.

With T+1 compressing settlement timelines by approximately 83%, the research calls for greater standardisation, automated instruction flows and more consistent trade data across middle- and back-office systems. DTCC argues that existing matching infrastructure and reference data utilities provide a foundation for improving settlement efficiency, reducing exceptions and strengthening operational resilience ahead of the transition.

Xceptor Expands Japanese Operations with Second Megabank Partnership

Xceptor has expanded its investment in Japan following the selection of its data automation platform by another major Japanese bank, bringing its client relationships to two of the country’s three megabanks. The latest implementation, delivered in partnership with local technology specialist GRCS, will use Xceptor’s sovereign-grade SaaS platform to streamline fragmented post-trade workflows and reduce reliance on manual processes.

The company has also appointed Airi Iwamoto as Key Account Director and Satomi Hirono as Principal, Client Success, to support Japanese financial institutions, including banks and trading houses.

Its expansion focuses on automating operational processes such as trade affirmations, confirmations, end-user computing remediation and fund services. A Japanese-language interface is also being introduced.