Global Custodian shortlists Leaders in Custody Asia Awards 2026

Global Custodian published the shortlist for its Leaders in Custody Asia Awards 2026, with the awards ceremony scheduled for May 28 in Singapore. Deutsche Bank leads the nominations with 13, followed by BNP Paribas with 11 and HSBC with 10. Mizuho and Standard Chartered each hold eight nominations, Northern Trust six, and MUFG, DBS and State Street four apiece.

The awards cover agent banks, fund administrators, fintechs and other service providers across the Asia Pacific region. Shortlist entries reflect survey responses, editors’ choices and innovation submissions, and assess performance across major, emerging and frontier markets. Categories include Agent Banks of the Year, best-in-class service areas, market-specific custody rankings, fund services and digital-asset initiatives.

Agent Banks of the Year nominees in the Major Markets category are DBS, Mizuho Bank and MUFG. Emerging Markets nominees are BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered Bank. Frontier Markets nominees are Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank. The overall Agent Bank shortlist names BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered Bank as contenders.

Best-in-class nominations include Global Account Management contenders Deutsche Bank (China), Mizuho Bank (Japan) and Standard Chartered Bank (Malaysia). Asset Safety and Risk Management nominees include BNP Paribas (India), Deutsche Bank (China) and Mizuho (Japan). Asset Servicing nominees include Deutsche Bank (China), ICBC (China) and Mizuho (Japan).

The shortlist also records how different voting groups assessed providers. Network managers rated BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and UBS highly. Asset managers put forward BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and ICBC. Global custodians nominated DBS, Deutsche Bank and HSBC.

Market-specific custody shortlists name Deutsche Bank, ICBC and Standard Chartered for China; DBS, Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered for Hong Kong; BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and Nuvama Asset Services for India; Mizuho Bank and MUFG for Japan; and DBS, Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered for Singapore.

Fund services categories include Apex Group, Citco and Precision Fund Services for Fund Administrator of the Year, and Citi, HSBC and State Street for ETF Administrator of the Year. Editors’ Choice nominations for Global Custodian of the Year list BNP Paribas, BNY, Citi, JP Morgan and State Street.

Several custody and fund-services transactions are shortlisted for Deal of the Year awards, including Citi’s work with U.S. Bank, HSBC’s transaction with Jio BlackRock Asset Management, JP Morgan’s engagement with Income Insurance Limited and MUFG’s work for U.S. Bank. Fund services deals on the shortlist include BNP Paribas’s work for Maybank Asset Management Singapore, Northern Trust’s arrangement with Avanda Investment Management, Brown Brothers Harriman’s work for ICBC UBS Asset Management and HSBC’s BlackRock Taiwan ETFs project.

Innovation and digital-asset categories reflect activity in tokenization and distributed ledger projects. Fintech of the Year nominees include Chainlink, Marketnode, Proxymity and Zodia. Digital asset and DLT initiative nominees include Euroclear’s Digital Financial Market Infrastructure (D-FMI), HSBC Orion, Northern Trust’s cross-border trading of digital carbon credits and a collaboration among UBS, Chainlink and DigiFT on automating tokenized fund operations. Projects listed as ones to watch include an end-to-end fund order and processing solution from Euroclear and Marketnode, Northern Trust’s Carbon Ecosystem and OCBC’s securities lending initiative.

Data and analytics entries include BNP Paribas’s project with UniSuper and BNY’s work with GPIF. Asset servicing partnerships and projects on the shortlist include Clearstream with ICBC, Euroclear with Marketnode and State Street’s partnership with Daiwa. Outstanding achievement nominations highlight HSBC Orion, Northern Trust’s carbon credits and tokenization initiatives, Proxymity’s Australia proxy voting transformation and State Street’s acquisition of Mizuho’s business.

Global Custodian has left nominations open for the Innovation Awards and opened submissions for the Individual Awards for the first time. The full shortlist and submission details are published by Global Custodian ahead of the awards ceremony in Singapore on May 28.