Qualified Custodian

A qualified custodian is an entity that a regulator recognises as permitted to hold client assets, usually because it is licensed as a bank, a trust company or an equivalent supervised institution, and typically subject to capital requirements, segregation rules, independent examination and reporting it could not opt out of. The term matters because holding assets for other people is a regulated activity in most places, and the status is what a professional investor is required to look for rather than a marketing description. The care needed when reading such a claim is that the phrase means different things in different systems, that a firm may hold a licence covering some activities and not custody, and that a group can present an affiliate's authorisation as its own. A verifiable claim names the regulator, the entity as registered and its identifier, and can be checked on that regulator's public register. Which entities qualify, what they must do, and whether the term is used at all differ by jurisdiction.