Institutional adoption of digital assets is expanding. Asset managers, custodians, exchanges, corporates, and fintech platforms now hold tokenised assets at scale. Yet the operational infrastructure responsible for securing and managing these assets is still uneven, opaque, and in many cases untested in real institutional environments. Loss events continue to occur due to custody process breakdowns, insider threats, compromised private keys, and smart-contract vulnerabilities. These failures are often irreversible and are rarely insured.
The challenge is not simply that risk exists. The challenge is that digital-asset custody risk has not been translated into a form that insurance markets can evaluate, price, and carry consistently. The environment lacks shared definitions, standard control expectations, structured data, and credible actuarial baselines. This results in a persistent gap between the custodians who hold digital assets and the insurance capital that could protect them.
Key Problems
Limited or Nonexistent Insurance Cover
Most custody operators either cannot obtain insurance or rely on restricted, exclusion-heavy coverage with limited capacity. This leaves institutions exposed to operational loss events.No Standard for What “Good Custody” Means
Custody environments vary significantly in key management, governance, infrastructure security, and operational controls. Without a recognised baseline, asset holders cannot reliably compare providers.Insurance Capital Cannot Price the Risk
Traditional insurance relies on shared frameworks, loss histories, and actuarial modeling. These are not yet established in digital-asset custody, limiting insurer participation and scale.Institutional Growth Is Constrained
Many funds, pension trustees, and regulated institutions require credible insurance-backed custody to meet fiduciary or governance obligations. Without it, digital-asset participation remains limited.
CoreLedger’s Approach
CoreLedger is establishing the operational and analytical foundation needed for custody risk to become insurable at institutional scale.
Standardised Custody Risk Assessment Framework
Evaluate custody environments against control standards tailored to cryptographic key management, workflow integrity, and operational governance.Quantified Risk Scoring and Exposure Measurement
Convert qualitative operational differences across custody providers into structured risk metrics that can be compared, rated, and monitored.Underwriting Models Specific to Custody Failure Scenarios
Build models aligned to realistic digital-asset loss pathways and operational failure probabilities, enabling capital providers to price risk consistently.Insurance Products That Cover Operational Loss
Design cover that responds directly to custody-related operational failures—not market volatility or speculative exposure.
We believe the tokenization of financial and real-world assets could grow to between $4 trillion and $5 trillion by 2030.”
— Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions (Citi GPS), “Money, Tokens and Games” Report, 2023
Outcomes Enabled
Custody providers can demonstrate operational credibility to institutional clients and capital partners.
Institutional asset holders gain a clear route to holding tokenised assets while meeting governance requirements.
Insurers obtain a structured, repeatable basis for underwriting and capacity deployment.
The market shifts from trust-based custody claims to verifiable, audit-backed risk assurance.