APAC banks risk losing clients without digital assets

Institutions that delay infrastructure investment risk surrendering client relationships.

Banks across Asia-Pacific risk losing clients and strategic relevance if they delay building digital-asset capabilities, as investor demand and tokenised finance outpace traditional banking infrastructure.

Ronald Poon, Executive Director APAC at AMINA (Hong Kong) Limited, said the debate has shifted from whether digital assets matter to whether banks can serve clients using them.

He pointed to conflicting US family-office surveys: one found nearly 89% held no crypto, while another said more than 74% were investing or exploring. Poon said the divide reflects readiness. Clients and institutions with due diligence, governance and infrastructure are advancing, while others remain in deliberation.

The risk is immediate in client retention. Professional investors and family offices are increasingly allocating to digital assets, and banks unable to support those transactions may drive clients toward regulated exchanges or better-prepared competitors.

“I think the key question here is not about whether it's being innovative anymore. It's about client retention,” Poon said.

A digital asset-ready bank needs more than a trading product. Poon said institutions require crypto forensics, know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering controls, transaction monitoring, round-the-clock surveillance, institutional-grade custody, secure key management and API links to client systems.

Banks must also understand the assets they offer. Poon said “not all stablecoins are created equally, and the bank really needs to scrutinise what's in those reserves because they are not all the same quality.”

The longer banks wait, the harder the catch-up becomes. As stablecoins become programmable cash and tokenised bonds or money-market funds become yield layers, institutions without infrastructure may rely on faster-moving banks as white-label providers.