New Data Shows Institutions Can No Longer Ignore Digital‑Asset Strategy

TL;DR:

• Financial institutions have encountered a gap between demand for digital assets and their operational capacity to meet it.
• Only 29% of surveyed firms updated their compliance teams, according to a joint study by Binance and the Financial Times.
• The Crypto-as-a-Service model allows banks and brokers to offer crypto services without having to build their own infrastructure from scratch.

The pressure on financial institutions to incorporate digital assets into their offering has stopped being a future project and become an urgent decision of the present.

A study commissioned by Binance revealed that 30% of surveyed institutional investors already held positions in digital assets, 43% planned to add them over the next twelve months, and around 80% expected to increase their exposure. This trend responds to the growing integration of tokenized funds and blockchain-based financial rails into global markets.

Infrastructure Limits Large Institutions

The real problem lies in infrastructure. The same study showed that most institutions recognize the opportunity but lack the operational foundations to capitalize on it. Only 26% had strengthened their governance and risk management controls, and just 32% had upgraded their custody systems to more secure and regulatory-compliant standards.

Building a crypto offering from scratch means integrating wallets, KYC flows and onboarding, transaction monitoring, Travel Rule compliance, liquidity access, reporting, settlement controls and user-oriented product design. That is time, capital and risk that many regulated institutions cannot take on without compromising other priorities.

The CaaS Model Could be a Strategic Shortcut

The Crypto-as-a-Service (CaaS) model is a potential alternative to solve this problem. The institution maintains the client relationship and controls the front-end experience, while a specialized provider operates the entire backend infrastructure. Binance positions its CaaS solution as a comprehensive suite aimed at regulated banks, brokers and fintechs seeking to enter the digital asset market at scale.

The platform includes access to spot and futures trading, wallet and subaccount systems, compliance tools and operational dashboards. In 2025, Binance processed $34 trillion in trading volume, a figure that demonstrates the depth of liquidity available to institutional clients of the service. The subaccount architecture and customizable markups also allow each institution to define its own fee structure and client segmentation, without relinquishing control over how it retains and monetizes the activity generated.