A custodian bank, or simply custodian, is a specialized financial institution responsible for safeguarding a firm's or individual's financial assets and is not engaged in "traditional" commercial or consumer/retail banking such as mortgage or personal lending, branch banking, personal accounts, Automated Teller Machines and so forth. The role of a custodian in such a case would be to:
arrange settlement of any purchases and sales and deliveries in/out of such securities and currency
collect information on and income from such assets and administer related tax withholding documents and foreign tax reclamation
administer voluntary and involuntary corporate actions on securities held such as stock dividends, stock splits, business combinations, tender offers, bond calls, etc.
provide information on the securities and their issuers such as annual general meetings and related proxies
maintain currency/cash bank accounts, effect deposits and withdrawals and manage other cash transactions
often perform additional services for particular clients such as mutual funds; examples include fund accounting, administration, legal, compliance and tax support services
Using US definitions, a person who owns street name securities and who is not a member of an exchange, holds the securities through a registration chain which involves one or more custodians. This is due to the perceived impracticality of registering traded securities in the name of each individual holder; instead, the custodian or custodians are registered as the holders and hold the securities in a fiduciary arrangement for the ultimate security holders. However, the ultimate security holders are still the legal owners of the securities. They are not merely beneficiaries of the custodian as a trustee. The custodian does not become at any point the owner of the securities, but is only a part of the registration chain linking the owners to the securities. Global securities safekeeping practices vary substantially with markets such as the UK, Australia and South Africa encouraging designated securities accounts in order to permit shareholder identification by companies. The definition of "shareholder" is generally upheld by corporate law rather than securities law. One role of custodians is to facilitate the exercise of share ownership rights, for example and processing dividends and other payments, corporate actions, the proceeds of a stock split or a reverse stock split, the ability to vote in the company's annual general meeting, information and reports sent from the company and so forth. The extent to which such services are offered are a function of the client agreement together with relevant market rules, regulations and laws. Custodian banks are often referred to as global custodians if they safe keep assets for their clients in multiple jurisdictions around the world, using their own local branches or other local custodian banks with which they contract to be in their "global network" in each market to hold accounts for their respective clients. Assets held in such a manner are typically owned by larger institutional firms with a considerable number of investments such as banks, insurance companies, mutual funds, hedge funds and pension funds. As of 2019 the 5 largest custodian banks in the world were:
In relation to American depositary receipts, a local custodian bank is a bank in a country outside the United States that holds the corresponding number of shares of stock trading on the home stock market represented by an ADR trading in the USA, with each multiple representing some multiple of the underlying foreign share. This multiple allows the ADRs to possess a price per share conventional for the US market even if the price of the foreign share is unconventional when converted to US dollars directly. This bank acts as custodian bank for the company that issues the ADRs in the US stock.
According to the Internal Revenue Code in the US, various retirement accounts such as: Traditional IRAs, Roth IRA, SEP IRA, or 401k plan accounts require that a qualified trustee, or custodian, hold IRA assets on behalf of the IRA owner. The trustee/custodian provides custody of the assets, processes all transactions, maintains other records pertaining to them, files the required IRS reports, issues client statements, helps clients understand the rules and regulations pertaining to certain prohibited transactions, and performs other administrative duties on behalf of the self-directed retirement account owner. Self-directed retirement account custodians should not be confused with a custodian bank, which strictly provides safekeeping for securities. While a self-directed retirement account custodian can provide custody for securities, typically it will specialize in non-security assets, or alternative investments. Examples of alternative investments would be: Real Estate, precious metals, private mortgages, private company stock, oil and gas LPs, horses, and intellectual property. These types of assets require a specialization on the part of the custodian due to the complexity of the documentation required to keep the alternative investments in compliance with the IRC.
Mutual Fund Custodian
A Mutual Fund Custodian refers typically to a custodian bank or trust company, or similar financial institution responsible for holding and safeguarding the securities owned by a mutual fund. A mutual fund's custodian may also act as one or more service agents for the mutual fund such as being the fund accountant, administrator and/or transfer agent which maintains shareholder records and disburses periodic dividends or capital gains, if any, distributed by the fund. The vast majority of funds use a third party custodian as required by SEC regulation to avoid complex rules and requirements about self-custody. A mutual fund retirement account custodian, however, refers to the plan administrator and recordkeeper such as noted above, which may not necessarily be the same institution providing custody services to the investments of the overall fund.
